The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged 11 people for their roles in creating and promoting an allegedly fraudulent crypto-focused pyramid and Ponzi scheme that raised more than $300 million from investors.
The SEC statement said the defendants were four founders from Indonesia, Russia, and the Republic of Georgia, three US-based promoters, and several other members of the Crypto Crusaders advertising group.
The cryptocurrency scheme was launched in January 2020 under the name Forsage. The SEC report also stated that the scheme claimed to be a decentralized smart contract platform, which allowed millions of retail investors to enter into transactions via smart contracts that operated on the Ethereum, Tron and Binance blockchains.
Allegedly, for more than two years, the Forsage scheme operated as a standard pyramid scheme, in which investors earned profits by recruiting others into the operation.
According to Wall Street's top watchdog, Forsage used assets from new investors to pay earlier ones according to a typical Ponzi structure.
The SEC reported that the two defendants agreed to settle the charges. One of them agreed to pay all fines.
"As the complaint alleges, Forsage is a fraudulent pyramid scheme launched on a massive scale and aggressively marketed to investors," Carolyn Welshhans, acting chief of the SEC's Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said. Nevertheless, "fraudsters cannot circumvent the federal securities laws by focusing their schemes on smart contracts and blockchains," she added.
