Two U.S. federal agencies have announced charges against four individuals whom they accuse of defrauding over $44 million from investors through three digital asset scams.
In its federal civil enforcement action filed with the Eastern District of New York, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged three Americans—Dwayne Golden, Gregory Aggesen, and Marquis Egerton, and one Indian national, Jatin Patel, of soliciting $44 million through Ponzi schemes that involved BTC and misappropriating millions of dollars.
CFTC alleges that the three suspects operated Empowercoin and Ecoinplus, through which they solicited more than $23 million in BTC. Together with Patel, they also operated JetCoin, through which they raised $21 million from investors.
As the watchdog alleges, the three projects all promised guaranteed returns. They claimed that they had teams of professionals who were trading the BTC and promised a 200% profit return in 90 days.
The reality was much different, however. CFTC says that the four either misappropriated the BTC and channeled it to their personal needs or used it to pay off some of the earlier investors in a ponzi scheme fashion. In total, they misappropriated $9.8 million through Ecoinplus and Empowercoin and $7.8 million through the JetCoin project.
In accompanying charges, the Department of Justice (DoJ) unsealed an 11-count indictment against the three Americans for defrauding investors. The charges included conspiracy to…
