The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal prosecutors have filed charges against a man accused of running a $200 million cryptocurrency trading scheme that defrauded 90,000 individuals. The SEC announced on April 22 that Ramil Palafox, a US and Philippines dual citizen, allegedly misappropriated over $57 million in investor funds through his company, PGI Global, between January 2020 and October 2021. The SEC claimed Palafox operated a Ponzi-like scam using a multilevel marketing model, attracting investors with false promises of crypto expertise and an AI-powered auto-trading platform. Palafox allegedly used investor funds to host extravagant events and pay referral bonuses to recruit more members. Scott Thompson, from the SEC’s Philadelphia office, stated that Palafox spent millions on personal luxuries instead of trading activities. The SEC is seeking legal action to prevent Palafox from selling securities, recover ill-gotten gains, and impose civil penalties. Concurrently, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia has brought criminal charges against Palafox for wire fraud, money laundering, and illegal monetary transactions. Prosecutors claim Palafox misled investors about daily returns from Bitcoin trading and concealed information about PGI’s operations. The Justice Department alleged that investors’ money was not used for trading, resulting in financial losses for many. If convicted, Palafox faces forfeiture of cash, vehicles, and luxury items. This case marks the SEC’s initial crypto-related lawsuit under Chair Paul Atkins. The agency had previously settled a case with Nova Labs over unregistered security sales. The SEC’s proactive approach aims to safeguard investors and crack down on fraudulent activities in the cryptocurrency space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal prosecutors have filed charges against a man accused of running a $200 million cryptocurrency trading scheme that defrauded 90,000 individuals. The SEC announced on April 22 that Ramil Palafox, a US and Philippines dual citizen, allegedly misappropriated over $57 million in investor funds through his company, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/author\/"},"category_info":"JUST IN<\/a>","tag_info":"JUST IN","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105900"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanillanews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}