US Court Fines ICOBox $16M for Securities Violation in SEC Case

A federal court docket has ordered ICOBox to pay a $16 million penalty to the Securities and Alternate Fee’s (SEC) for violating U.S. securities legislation.

On March 5, Decide Dale S. Fischer of the District Court docket for the Central District of California granted the SEC’s movement for default judgment in opposition to the ICO-as-a-service platform and founder and CEO Nikolay Evdokimov.

The SEC first introduced fees in opposition to ICOBox in September 2019, accusing the corporate of internet hosting an unregistered securities sale. The regulator additionally accused the corporate of performing as an unlicensed securities dealer for greater than 30 token gross sales.

Elevating $14.6 million from greater than 2,000 unaccredited buyers in its 2017 ICO, Evdokimov had claimed throughout the sale that ‘ICO’ tokens would rise in worth as firms began utilizing the platform.

As a part of the judgment, ICOBox will likely be fined $16 million and Evdokimov must pay a private penalty of greater than $192,000.

Default judgments are often granted in favor of a plaintiff when a defendant has not responded to summons or has failed to seem earlier than the court docket. The SEC filed a movement for default judgment on January 9, after quite a few makes an attempt to serve Evdokimov personally.

In accordance with the submitting, Evdokimov didn’t return emails and moved out of his final identified residence “in the midst of the night time with two months’ hire unpaid” quickly after the SEC had served Evdokimov’s spouse in late September.

When the SEC tried to serve discover to ICOBox’s resident agent within the Cayman Islands, they had been knowledgeable that they had resigned and had not, apparently, been changed.