Well, they definitely paid a hefty price for scamming their clients. I gotta admit, I haven't come across ATM Coin before.
Can someone confirm if this is the same one? Check it out here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/atmcoin/. Or is it a different project altogether?
So, here’s a quick rundown from the news article:
"A New York Court has found the founders of ATM Coin guilty of fraud and misusing client funds, making them cough up $4.25 million to settle things. Four companies linked to ATM Coin were also charged.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has ordered Blake Harrison Kantor and Nathan Mullins, along with four associated companies, to pay $4.25 million due to fraud and misuse of funds. The case kicked off by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Division of Virtual Currency on April 16, 2018."
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this news, guys. What do you think?
When I read about news like this, I just have this sense of delight because it shows that someone is watching and people are being brought to face the responsibility of their actions and when that happen, the people involved if they are convicted of wrong doing, it just becomes part of their records for life unless they are able to obtain a presidential pardon though. Without knowing the details of the case or when it started, I am sure reprieve must have come the way of the victims that have been affected by the actions of some people who think they can take others for granted.
It should also be a message to people not to be ruled by the motive for profit making and forget the signals to fraud and some ventures that should be avoided in all totality and in this case binary options top the list.
One of the biggest thing that happened here is finally one of the white collar criminals will serve a term in prison, Harrison Kantor will serve more than 7 years in prison for his fraud and I think one of the factors about that is that he lied with the FBI, I'm happy that someone already will serve as an example as mostly crypto related white collar criminals only gets a slap in the wrist. The most recent one I know is Mark Karpeles who is the CEO of Mt. Gox who was found guilty of data manipulation and was suppose to serve a 10 year jail sentence but the Japanese court was good enough to hand him a suspended 30 month jail sentence which he won't receive if he maintained good behavior for four years. I just want to see these kinds of punishments more and more for them to stop attempting to destroy the industry anymore.
One of the many things we should thank for with the government is that it is still doing its job of running after the many crooks now taking up residence in the cryptocurrency industry. All the schemes and scams should be exposed so they can't look for more victims. Sadly, programs like this will continue to be attracting many participants as they are usually appealing to our sense of greed.
Whenever I heard a successful prosecution on the government's side against scammers and fraudsters, I am celebrating inside me because this is the way we can be bringing the justice the victims are clamoring for. And we are sending a strong message to scammers to stop spreading many traps around and go back to where they came from.
The cryptocurrency industry has no reserved space for scammers, hackers and all the evils in between.
Let us not give the issue greater than its size, it is not about cryptocurrencies, but several crimes.
These people run a "fraudulent scheme that includes binary options." the options must be traded on an exchange registered with the CFTC.
- they tried to change the ownership of documents, which is a crime.
- Manipulated site data for fraud.
- Mislead users using cryptocurrencies.
So the punishment was for several crimes, one of which related to cryptocurrencies.