The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Joseph Willner, day trader based in Philadelphia. Bitcoin currency to hide its profits. In the case filed on October 30, 2017, the accused illegally took over more than 100 brokerage accounts and used the victim's funds to artificially raise the stock prices and then swap them for profits highs
. Press release, the SEC claimed that Willner used the services of an unnamed Bitcoin exchange to convert funds into US dollars to Bitcoin to hide his profits. The product of the exchange was transferred to another individual, who was not included in the case.
Part of the release reads:
"Hide his payments to the other individual as part of a profit-sharing agreement, Willner would have transferred the proceeds from profitable transactions to a digital money company that converts US dollars into Bitcoin and then passed them on for payment. "
Willner's modus operandi
Based on the SEC's lawsuit, Willner and his cohort raised at least $ 700,000 in profits from their alleged takeover scam. As part of the investigation conducted by the SEC's Cyber Unit, the system of taking control of accounts poses an increasingly significant threat to retail investors.
According to Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC The repurchase transactions pose an increasingly important threat to retail investors, and this is exactly the type of fraud that our new Cyber Unit is committing.
The Cyber Unity of the SEC was introduced in September 2017 to focus on crimes involving digital currencies, as well as on the initial offer of coins. currency and technology of distributed registers.