Judge Rejects Appeal of Promoter Accused of $18M Crypto Fraud
A Utah federal judge has rejected an appeal to dismiss the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) lawsuit against the promoter of a crypto-mining company accused of running an $18 million scheme.
On November 26, Judge Ann Marie McKeefe Allen rejected Christopher Cron's appeal to allow the SEC's complaint against Green United LLC on September 23, Cron failed to provide the reasons for the appeal.
“The court declines to remand this case for interlocutory appeal because Mr. Crone has not shown any substantial reason to differ in his opinion as to the law governing any of the matters addressed in the court's September 23, 2007, order,” the judge wrote.
In its argument to dismiss the lawsuit, Crown SEC did not prove that the Green Box investment contracts presented by Green United, as the regulator stated in the petition.
Excerpt from Judge Allen's order denying Christopher Crone's interlocutory appeal. Source: PACER
The SEC also said it was confused by elements of the Hawaii test that defined securities.
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Allen argued that Cron erred in the arguments, citing two different interpretations of the term cherry-picked, and that, as he pointed out, “no court has provided legal support to show that it has adopted that meaning.”
In the year In 2023, the SEC accused Green United executives of a scam that raised $18 million from investors between April 2018 and December 2022 by selling the executives investments in “green boxes” and “green nodes,” which the regulator says funded Bitcoin.
According to the SEC complaint, investors were told that the firm was developing a green blockchain and that the value of the GREEN token would increase based on its efforts to generate large profits.
The SEC says the green blockchain does not exist, and that the green token was created after the initial hardware sale to investors and distributed periodically to make the operation appear successful.
Green United founder Wright Thurston filed a separate motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
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