Securities and Exchange Commission sent a press release today Announcing that “Crypto Entrepreneur” Justin Sun has been accused of fraud for manipulating the crypto market. That’s great news, but what’s also intriguing is that a number of celebrities are to blame along with it.

Sun, along with its three companies (Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Ltd., and Rainberry Inc), are accused of selling crypto through highly shady, MLM-like promotional deals, none of which are registered and ultimately breach the Securities. To behave. It is then accused of violating the “anti-fraud and market manipulation provisions” of the Federal Securities Laws by “staging a scheme to artificially inflate the apparent trading volume” of its own cryptocurrencies:

The SEC complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that Sun and its companies offered and sold TRX and BTT as investments through multiple unregistered “reward programs” that prompt interested parties to promote the tokens on social media. Join and recruit Tron-affiliated Telegram and Discord channels and create BitTorrent accounts in exchange for TRX and BTT distributions. The complaint also alleges that Sun, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry are offering and selling TRX in unregistered monthly airdrops to investors, including the United States, who buy and hold TRX in Tron wallets or participating crypto-asset trading platforms. According to the complaint, each of these reckless offers and sales violated Section 5 of the Securities Act.

The Commission also alleges that Sun violated the anti-fraud and market manipulation provisions of federal securities laws by devising a scheme to artificially inflate the apparent trading volume of TRX on the secondary market. From at least April 2018 to February 2019, Sun allegedly directed its employees to trade more than 600,000 laundered TRX transactions between 4.5 million and 7.4 million TRX flushes per day between two crypto-asset trading platform accounts under its control. is being done. This plan required a substantial supply of TRX, which Sun allegedly provided. As alleged, Sun also sold TRX to the secondary market, generating $31 million from illegal, unregistered offerings and token sales.

All bad! Alongside Sun, however, the SEC has also accused several people it has hired to support crypto scams, claiming that they were “illegally touted” the currency “without disclosing the amount of compensation and compensation for it”.

Also bad! Eight famous names

• Lindsay Lohan

• Jake Paul

• DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy)

• Austin Mahone

• Michele Mason (Kendra Lust)

• Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty)

• Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo)

• Aliaune Thiam (Akon)

If you’re wondering about possible penalties for these sneaky salespeople, the SEC says that everyone except Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone “agrees to pay a total of more than $400,000 in taxes, interest, and penalties, with or without pleading guilty.” rejecting the SEC’s findings”.