The SEC filed a lawsuit on Dec. 22, 2025, SEC v. Morocoin Tech Corp. et al, alleging that three investment clubs and four crypto trading platforms committed fraud in violation of US securities laws. The defendants allegedly promised retail investors that buying crypto tokens associated with multiple projects would generate outsized profits. The SEC alleges the offerings were fake, and…
We assemble the first comprehensive sample of venture fraud cases involving 614 U.S. venture capital (VC)-backed startups founded since 2000. We find that VC-backed firms are 54% more likely to face fraud charges than comparable non-VC-backed firms within a subsample of newly public firms where detection likelihood is high and homogeneous. We then examine the role of governance in explaining…
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today the entry of a final consent judgment as to Fernando Passos in the SEC’s civil enforcement action that charged Passos, the former executive vice president of finance and investor relations of Brazilian reinsurance company IRB Brasil Resseguros S.A., for allegedly planting a false story with the media and disseminating false documents claiming that…
Can you insider-trade on an investigation into your own insider trading? Polymarket just turned that question from philosophical to practical. Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT published findings Thursday morning naming Axiom, a crypto trading platform, as the company whose employees he believed had used non-public information to place profitable trades. The investigation had been teased for days, and Polymarket had created a…
A Florida man accused of running what is arguably the largest crypto-linked Ponzi scheme involving $328 million has been arrested, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Christopher Alexander Delgado, 34, of Apopka, Florida, was taken into custody on a criminal complaint charging him with wire fraud and money laundering, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. If…
A former First Brands Group executive told a judge last month that he falsified financial statements, inflated invoices and double-pledged collateral to help the auto-parts supply firm get billions of dollars in financing before its collapse. Peter Andrew Brumbergs made the statements as part of his Jan. 27 guilty plea to fraud charges, a transcript of which was unsealed Wednesday.…