Status Network Co-Founders Disappear After Raising $100 Million In ICO

The Status Network co-founders, the men behind the “illegal” $100 million ICO, disappeared into thin air and investors are now getting angry and are calling for legal help. Following more in the blockchain news.

The investors can’t locate the Status Network co-founders which developed the Web3 apps. This is a major problem because they are trying to sue them for allegedly selling unregistered securities in their $100 million ICO. The investors are preparing to sue them and other larger companies as well. The co-founders are still nowhere to be found.

Stay Private. Use Status.https://t.co/mhdshYbjsi pic.twitter.com/xBYPLESFSt

— Status (@ethstatus) July 31, 2020

The counsel firms from Roche Cyrulnik Freedman LLP and Selendy & Gay PLLC, filed a letter to a New York court saying that they have undertaken exhaustive efforts to locate Jarred Hope and Carl Bennets, the co-founders of Status which is a development company that builds Web3 apps including a decentralized chat app and web browsers. The letter stated that the investors are concerned that the co-founders could completely disappear from the internet as well.

The investors filed the original complaint against Hope and Bennets back in April alleging that they launched an illegal $100 million ICO in 2017 which was an unregistered security sale. The lawsuit argued that the Status network misled investors by saying its SNT token was a utility network token and not a subject to the US securities laws. The investors also want their money back. Hope is the co-founder of Status and he was responsible for putting the sale together. Bennetts is also a co-founder and chief communications officer who was responsible for promoting the sale and now they are nowhere to be found.

Both Hope and Bennetts are on Twitter and they are both very active. However, their whereabouts are unknown. The investor’s counsel spent a lot of resources to find them through blog posts, media sites, and corporate records. They even hired a private investigator to track them down. The investors still can’t work out where Status actually is. The company is registered in Zug, Switzerland but they are quite unsure whether the company has an address there for service of process or whether Switzerland hosts any physical office or employees. They are concerned now that they lost all their money to a company that doesn’t exist.