US SEC Secures Court Order to Freeze Assets of Alleged ICO Fraudster

“A recidivist Quebec securities law violator.” This was how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) described PlexCorps owner Dominic Lacroix, Cointelegraph reported.

In December 2017, Lacroix ran afoul of the SEC, with the agency suing him for securities fraud, resulting in the freezing of his assets. The order was unsealed on June 18. Now, the SEC has acquired another emergency court order to freeze Lacroix’s assets due to an ongoing enforcement investigation.

Lacroix allegedly uses clandestine accounts to hide assets acquired from investors through the PlexCoin ICO. The SEC aims to seek penalties, interest, permanent injunctions, an officer-and-director prohibition, and the banning of Lacroix from operating in digital securities.

The initial case filed against the alleged fraudster involved the PlexCoin ICO launched by PlexCorps in August 2017. Sabrina Paradis-Royer, Lacroix’s partner, was also hit with the same charges.

PlexCorps reportedly told investors that they were going to receive a 1,354 percent return of capital in mere 29 days if they commit to the company. This overpromising tactic resulted in the ICO accumulating $15 million from thousands of investors.

A similar case was observed in Michael Stollaire, president of Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services Inc. Stollaire reportedly lured investors by lying that he had dealings with several prominent companies like PayPal and Verizon, as well as with the Federal Reserve.

In order to attract more attention to the venture, Stollaire employed social media where he promoted the initial coin offering (ICO) through a fictional blitz campaign. He even went as far as to claim that investing in the ICO is equal to investing in firms like Intel or Google.

Robert A. Cohen, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit, asked investors and the general public to scrutinize any crypto promotions before committing their money to these startups. Cases like those involving Stollaire and Lacroix are some of the reasons why the SEC is clamping down hard on proliferating ICOs in the crypto market.

However, other notable individuals are saying that the agency’s method is suffocating legitimate ICOs that are trying to raise funds for their genuine projects. Recently, cybersecurity expert John McAfee was allegedly “threatened” by the SEC and asked him to stop promoting ICOs, to which McAfee obliged, although not without with a scathing comment on the agency.

McAfee is a known ICO promoter and reportedly received $105,000 per tweet from companies. He claimed that his clients were more than happy to pay the sum as they received a 600 percent return on their expenditures.