Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS) has become the latest ICO project to be charged with fraud by the SEC.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained a court order to halt the initial coin offering (ICO), which has raised as much as $21m from investors in and outside the U.S.
TBIS launched as a ‘revolutionary blockchain-based enterprise network infrastructure service. It claimed to offer solutions such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), and Company as a Service (CaaS), among others.
The company also said it uses the power of blockchain technology to condense all the enterprise network requirements of a company into the simple convenience of a mobile device.
SEC claims that Titanium president Michael Alan Stollery, a self-described “blockchain evangelist,” lied about business relationships with the Federal Reserve and dozens of well-known firms, including PayPal, Verizon, Boeing, and The Walt Disney Company.
It also alleges that Titanium’s website contained fabricated testimonials from corporate customers and that Stollery publicly – and fraudulently –claimed to have relationships with numerous corporate clients. SEC has also accused Stollery of promoting the ICO through videos and social media, comparing it to investing in “Intel or Google.”
“This ICO was based on a social media marketing blitz that allegedly deceived investors with purely fictional claims of business prospects,” said Robert A. Cohen, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit. “Having filed multiple cases involving allegedly fraudulent ICOs, we again encourage investors to be especially cautious when considering these as investments.”
The TBIS ICO, which launched at the beginning of the year, met its 35 million BAR ($21m) hardcap target. BAR is the name of the native token in the TBIS ecosystem.
As part of the SEC court order, TBIS business activities will come to a halt. The courts have frozen the company’s assets pending the outcome of the investigation.
The company has issued a statement about the current situation, stating that TBIS “fully intends to continue cooperating with the SEC’s investigation in accordance with the terms of the TRO.”
Earlier this year, The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a fresh warning to investors about unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges. The SEC, Divisions of Enforcement and Trading and Markets, published a statement on “online trading platforms,” or cryptocurrency exchanges, that trade in tokens minted by initial coin offerings (ICOs) and digital assets in general.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
