Judge names 2 obscure altcoins as commodities in $120M Ponzi case
An Illinois District Court judge has sided with the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in a crypto Ponzi case and designated two little-known altcoins as commodities.
The Ponzi scheme involved Sam Icurtti from Oregon and several of his companies. The scheme defrauded victims by promising “fixed returns” on investments in “digital assets” of 15% annually.
These include Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), but also Olympus (OHM) and KlimaDAO (KLIMA), which the order says qualify as commodities.
“Those virtual currencies fall into the same general category as Bitcoin, on which there is regulated futures trading,” the CFTC said.
KLIMA is the governing symbol of KlimaDAO, which markets itself to solve the problems of “coordinating” climate finance.
KLIMA is trading at just $3.55 at press time, down 99.9% from its peak of $3,777 on October 21, 2021, according to CoinGecko data.
OHM is the governing symbol of OlympusDAO, an organization that aims to create a community-owned decentralized reserve currency.
Oregon man to spend $120 million on Ponzi scheme.
In the year In a statement on July 3, the CFTC said that Equity has invested in stable crypto assets to gain investors' confidence and has invested in stories that embellished its past successes.
However, instead of returning profits to participants, Equicurti “ran something like a Ponzi scheme,” repeatedly misrepresenting the fund's performance, deliberately omitting that the fund's price had fallen by more than 98.99 percent in just a few months.
In addition, the order ecurti transferred most of their money to early investors to prevent losses. This resulted in a $20 million shortfall for investors in the so-called carbon offset program.
The CFTC also revealed that Ekkurti had previously lost his personal bitcoin holdings in a hack.
Judge Mary Rowland ordered Ekkurty to pay more than $83.7 million in restitution and $36.9 million in eviction fees.
Related: KlimaDAO Japan to launch carbon credit marketplace with Progmat
The CFTC first accused Ekukurthy and Ravishankar Avadhanam of fraud and failed to register with their agency in May 2022.
The CFTC said the couple used a website, YouTube videos and other means to solicit more than $44 million from at least 170 people.
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