SEC Hammers Unicoin and Execs With $100M Fraud Charges—Another Crypto ’Moon Mission’ Crashes to Earth

Regulators drop the hammer on yet another crypto project accused of playing fast-and-loose with investor funds. This time it’s Unicoin—along with its top brass—getting slapped with securities fraud charges for allegedly running a nine-figure scam.

The complaint paints a familiar picture: promises of revolutionary blockchain returns, vague technical jargon, and executive bank accounts swelling while investors hold the bag. Just another day in crypto’s wild west—where the only thing decentralized seems to be accountability.

Bonus finance jab: At least traditional bankers wait until after the IPO to fleece their clients.

"Additional examples of the Promoting Defendants’ statements include: (a) social media and website posts that touted potential returns of 9,000,000% based on bitcoin’s 9,000,000% growth in the past 10 years and told investors to ’take advantage of the early days of Unicoin and get them today,’ highlighting that ’Bitcoin experienced a tremendous rise in value, transforming early adopters into millionaires, and even billionaires,’" the filing said.

Unicoin received a Wells notice from the SEC last December, informing the company that the regulator — then under the leadership of former Chair Gary Gensler — intended to file securities fraud charges. Last month, Konanykhin sent a letter to Unicoin’s shareholders, informing them that the company had rebuffed the SEC’s attempt to settle the charges, rejecting what he described as an “ultimatum” to attend a settlement negotiation meeting by April 18.

“We declined to show up,” Konanykhin told CoinDesk in an April interview, adding that the SEC had made certain pre-meeting demands he deemed “unacceptable” and claiming that the SEC’s probe had caused “multi-billion-dollar damages” to the company.

Neither Konanykhin nor a spokesperson for Unicoin responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment by press time. In a press release shared earlier this year in response to a Wall Street Journal article, a spokesperson said, "Unicoin, the only fully U.S.-registered, U.S.-regulated, U.S.-audited, and U.S.-publicly reporting cryptocurrency company, has consistently complied with all regulations."

According to court documents, the SEC is seeking disgorgement and civil penalties.