A Canadian regional regulator has brought fresh charges against PlexCoin, a digital currency scam that has been embroiled in legal battles for the past two years. The Quebec’s Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has charged the operators of the scam project with seven offences.
PlexCoin was a digital currency project launched in 2017 by Canadian Dominic Lacroix through his company PlexCorps. He touted the token to be the next big thing, promising investors a 13-fold profit in less than a month. He allegedly solicited over $15 million from thousands of investors in the U.S and Canada before the SEC shut down the scam in December 2017.
He is now set to face justice for his crimes after the AMF brought fresh charges against him. The provincial regulator has charged Lacroix with making misrepresentations regarding securities transactions and making distributions without a prospectus.
AMF has also filed charges against Sabrina Paradis-Royer and Yan Ouellet, two of the other operators of the scam. It charged them with “making distributions without a prospectus in respect of transactions in securities in connection with the PlexCoin project.”
The regulator claims that it has been pursuing the fraudulent project since July 2017. It obtained freeze orders from the Financial Markets Administrative Tribunal on the personal property, bank accounts and digital currency wallets held by Lacroix and Paradis-Royer. It then collaborated with the SEC to redistribute the frozen funds to the investors.
PlexCorps was the first company that the SEC’s Cyber Unit filed charges against. The Unit launched in late 2017 to investigate crimes in the blockchain and digital currencies industry.
The SEC has so far been the most prominent regulator pursuing PlexCorps. In October last year, the regulator won a case that had been in court for close to two years against the company. The court ordered PlexCorps to pay $4.5 million in disgorgement of ill gains, $2 million in civil penalties and $348,000 in prejudgment interest. It further ordered the defendants to forfeit the $4 million frozen by the Superior Court of Quebec and $800,000 frozen by a New York court.
As CoinGeek reported earlier this year, the SEC is working on a plan to return some of the recovered funds. The U.S regulator stated that it’s seeking to utilize the simplest way that will cost the investors the least amount of charges, ensuring they get back as much of their lost funds as possible.
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