Nik De and Cheyenne Ligon
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto company Unicoin and three executives on Tuesday night on fraud charges, saying the company raised over $100 million for tokens that were not actually backed by the real estate its executives claimed.
The SEC sued Unicoin, CEO Alexander Konanykhin, former board chair Maria Moschini, senior vice president and general counsel Richard Devlin and former chief investment officer and investor relations officer Alejandro Dominguez on securities law violations,
Among its allegations, the SEC said Unicoin never actually owned the real estate properties it told investors it had acquired, and that those properties' values were inflated.
"For example, between September 2023 and January 2024, the Promoting Defendants announced acquisitions of properties in Argentina, Thailand, Antigua, and the Bahamas, purportedly with appraised values totaling more than of $1.4 billion; in fact, the majority of those transactions never closed and the actual combined value of the four properties was no more than $300 million," the complaint said.
The defendants also "overstated the Company's sales" of its rights certificates, suggesting in social media posts and to investors that it had raised far more funds than it actually had, the SEC alleged. While Unicoin claimed it had made $3 billion in sales by June 2024, it actually never sold more than $110 million in its rights certificates, according to the complaint.
Moreover, Unicoin advertised its rights certificates, including by promising outsized returns of up to 9 million percent, the SEC alleged, pointing to marketing efforts on taxi cabs, ferries, "office building elevator screens," digital billboards, coasters, television programs, news websites and public wi-fi kiosks.
"Additional examples of the Promoting Defendants’ statements include: (a) social media and website posts that touted potential returns of 9,000,000% based on bitcoin’s 9,000,000% growth in the past 10 years and told investors to 'take advantage of the early days of Unicoin and get them today,' highlighting that 'Bitcoin experienced a tremendous rise in value, transforming early adopters into millionaires, and even billionaires,'" the filing said.
Unicoin received a Wells notice from the SEC last December, informing the company that the regulator — then under the leadership of former Chair Gary Gensler — intended to file securities fraud charges. Last month, Konanykhin sent a letter to Unicoin’s shareholders, informing them that the company had rebuffed the SEC’s attempt to settle the charges, rejecting what he described as an “ultimatum” to attend a settlement negotiation meeting by April 18.
“We declined to show up,” Konanykhin told CoinDesk in an April interview, adding that the SEC had made certain pre-meeting demands he deemed “unacceptable” and claiming that the SEC’s probe had caused “multi-billion-dollar damages” to the company.
Neither Konanykhin nor a spokesperson for Unicoin responded to CoinDesk’s request for comment by press time. In a press release shared earlier this year in response to a Wall Street Journal article, a spokesperson said, "Unicoin, the only fully U.S.-registered, U.S.-regulated, U.S.-audited, and U.S.-publicly reporting cryptocurrency company, has consistently complied with all regulations."
According to court documents, the SEC is seeking disgorgement and civil penalties.
