Justin Sun directed wash trading scheme from his US apartment, SEC claims
Tron founder Justin Sun “promoted TRX and/or BTT to consumers and investors located in the United States” during lengthy business trips to the country according to a reworked lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Sun had previously asked for the suit, which alleges that he, along with the Tron Foundation, the BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry Inc sold unregistered securities in the form of Tron (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens to be dropped. Sun claimed that the SEC “is not a worldwide regulator” and that it was “targeting “predominantly foreign conduct.”
However, in updated documents, the SEC asserts that it does indeed hold jurisdiction over the defendants because they “purposefully took actions in and directed toward the United States.”
According to documents filed on Thursday, the defendants:
- Promoted TRX and/or BTT to consumers and investors located in the United States
- Offered and sold TRX and BTT in unregistered transactions to individuals located in the United States
- Conducted a fraudulent scheme to wash trade TRX on a trading platform based in the United States, namely Bittrex
Read more: Justin Sun’s $28 million trip to nowhere
Significantly, the revamped lawsuit also claims that “during the course of his work on behalf of the Tron Foundation, the BitTorrent Foundation, and/or Rainberry, Sun traveled extensively to the United States during the time that TRX and BTT were promoted, offered, and sold.”
Sun allegedly spent more than 80 days in the US in 2017, over 120 days in 2018, and around 180 days in 2019. This included trips to Boston, New York, and San Francisco.
The suit also alleges that Rainberry rented an apartment where Sun stayed during some of his US trips in 2019.
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