On March 22nd, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Tron founder Justin Sun for selling and distributing unregistered securities through the TRX and BTT tokens, violating Section 5 of the Securities Act.
According to the SEC press release, Justin Sun, the Tron Foundation, the BitTorrent Foundation, and BitTorrent (now known as Rainberry) face charges of fraud and market manipulation for creating an extensive “wash trading” scheme that manipulated the trading volume of TRX.
Today we charged crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his wholly-owned companies for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities Tronix and BitTorrent.
Read more:https://t.co/4tXgKNof6Q
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) March 22, 2023
The SEC also sued actress and singer Lindsay Lohan, influencer and boxer Jake Paul, influencer Michele Mason, and rappers and singers Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, Ne-Yo, and Akon for illegally promoting TRX and BTT without disclosing that they had been paid to do so.
Most of these celebrities, except for Cortez Way and Mahone, have agreed to pay over $400,000 in restitution, interest, and fines to settle the SEC charges.
