The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), regulator of the markets in the US, has agreed to sanctions of 400,000 dollars, about 370,000 euros, with several celebrities whom it accused of promoting investment in cryptocurrencies on their social networks without specifying that they charged for it or how much.
The SEC has filed charges against several celebrities: influencer and content creator Jake Paul, actress Lindsay Lohan, singers Austin Mahone and Akon, porn actress Kendra Lust, and rappers Lil Yachty, Ne-Yo, and Soulja Boy. Most have agreed to pay $400,000 to avoid charges, neither admitting nor denying the investigation, except for Mahone and Soulja Boy.
The regulator detected that they promoted the purchase of cryptocurrencies such as Tronix (TRX) or BitTorrent (BTT) on their networks without mentioning that they did so by charging for it.
The businessman who paid celebrities has bigger problems: Justin Sun, owner of the Tron, BitTorrent and Rainberry platforms, is accused of orchestrating a plot to hide that the promotion was sponsored and of manipulating the market with million-dollar transactions to inflate the volume of TRX trading.
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.
