$68 Million Worth Of Illegal ICOs Brought Down By The SEC Last Year

Today on our DC Forecasts crypto news site we tackle the shutting down of a dozen successful but illegal actions related to token sales by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission just as the fiscal year ended on September 30.

Nearly half of these sales managed to raise more than $68 combined from investors right before getting shut down. However, this is just a small portion of the actual $3.9 billion collected by the SEC for different penalties during fiscal 2018.

According to the SEC report:

“Given the explosion of ICOs over the last year, we have tried to pursue cases that deliver broad messages and have the market impact beyond their own four corners.’’

In the report also, the Division of Enforcement as a part of the SEC formed a new Cyber Unit that helped this agency focus on cyber-related misconduct. For this reason, the Commission managed to bring down more than 20 cases including those involving ICOs and the Division opened more than 200 cyber-related investigations some of which are still ongoing.

Further, in the SEC report, we can read that:

“While many of these cases have involved allegations of fraud, the Division also has pursued enforcement actions to ensure compliance with the registration requirements of the federal securities laws. In the past year, the Division has opened dozens of investigations involving ICOs and digital assets, many of which were ongoing at the close of FY 2018.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission is now going after other crypto-related entities and startups that are unregistered or show up as unregistered brokers that facilitate token sales.