The SEC, For the Second Time, Froze One ICO’s Account
Having in the past sued him over securities infractions and dupery in 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is one more time taking action against the co-founder of the PlexiCoin cryptocurrency project.
On the 15th of June, the SEC acquired an emergency court order – unsealed on the 18th of June – to freeze the assets of Dominic Lacroix, who the agency named “a recidivist Quebec securities law violator” over his earlier effort to introduce a token sale, or initial coin offering (ICO).
Last December, Lacroix, the project’s other co-founder Sabrina Paradis-Royer, and their firm PlexCorp, had been sued for securities fraudulence and got their assets frozen in a similar emergency order. Today, the SEC has acquired an additional court order right after new proof of unlawful activity on the part of Lacroix.
PlexCorp was thought to have come up with $15 million from several investors through the ICO, as initially reported by CoinDesk, of which the SEC stated $810,000 was placed with payment processor Stripe. Nevertheless, an unidentified amount was believed to remain in cryptocurrency wallets managed by the company.
The most recent demand for an asset order – submitted at a federal court in New York City – claims further illegal activities since the preceding freeze, according to an SEC lawsuit release dated Wednesday.
The agency said:
“Lacroix was making use of secret accounts, like an account in his brother’s name but which he managed, to wrongly distribute for personal use digital assets acquired from investors during the PlexCoin Initial Coin Offering.
Apart from the SEC’s 2017 measures against the project and its founders, a Canadian court ordered a two-month jail sentence against Lacroix and $100,000 in fines against his company for contempt of court.
