© Reuters. Lindsay Lohan, the last famous person charged in the US for promoting crypto assets
New York, Mar 22 (.).- The actress Lindsay Lohan became this Wednesday the latest celebrity to be charged and fined by the United States regulator for promoting crypto assets on social networks without disclosing that it was a sponsorship or the compensation you received.
Lohan is part of a group of eight celebrities, including singer Austin Mahone, boxer Jake Paul, four rappers and a porn actress, accused of illegally promoting the crypto assets Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT), the Securities and Exchange Commission announced. (SEC, in English).
With the exception of the singer Mahone and one of the rappers -Soulja Boy- the defendants have agreed to pay more than 400,000 dollars together to settle the case without admitting or denying their guilt.
The businessman who paid celebrities has worse problems: Justin Sun, owner of the Tron, BitTorrent and Rainberry platforms, is accused of orchestrating a scheme to hide that the promotion was sponsored and of manipulating the market to inflate the trading volume of TRX .
The SEC indicates that between 2018 and 2019, Sun ordered its employees to make some 600,000 illegal TRX transactions between two of its platforms to artificially create volume and also sold that crypto asset on the secondary market without registering it, pocketing 31 million euros. Dollars.
The regulator’s lawsuit alleges that Sun and his companies offered and sold TRX and BTT as an investment through pyramid “programs”, in which they instructed interested parties to promote the crypto assets on social networks, create BitTorrent accounts in exchange to receive more crypto assets and “recruit” others on Telegram and Discord channels.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who has spearheaded other such legal actions in recent months, said the case is a new example of the “high risk investors face when crypto asset securities are offered and sold without transparency.” proper”.
Earlier, the regulator imposed notable penalties on two celebrities involved in the illegal promotion of the EMAX crypto asset: Kim Kardashian had to pay $1.26 million and former NBA player Paul Pierce $1.4 million.
/jpd
