Is Kim Kardashian Just the "Tip of the Iceberg" for Celebrity Crypto Cases?

Kim Kardashian could be ‘tip of the iceberg’ for celeb crypto crackdown

Kardashian’s flagrant promotion of an individual crypto token was effectively low-hanging fruit for regulators, experts said. But celebs who promoted sites like Crypto.com and FTX — where customers can trade a wide swath of cryptocurrencies — could also be targets, according to crypto expert and London School of Economics visiting fellow Garrick Hileman.

“I would wonder whether that’s the next frontier,” Hileman said of targeting celebs for promoting exchanges.

Gensler has said many cryptocurrencies are operating as “unregistered securities” and the SEC could therefore interpret celebs who promote sites for trading the digital coins as violating securities laws, Hileman said.

He added that David, Damon and Brady should be “worried” about the Kardashian news.

Kim Kardashian

… I do not give investing advice around here, but a reasonable rule of thumb is “when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, especially crypto asset securities, that definitely means that those investment products are wrong for all investors”? Like, who was EthereumMax right for? Also, when celebrities and influencers endorse a crypto thing you’ve never heard of, it definitely means they got paid to do it? Honestly if you get an Instagram post from an influencer promoting a crypto thing and not disclosing that she was paid for it, the investment opportunity is to send a whistleblower letter to the SEC. Maybe they’ll pay you for pointing it out.

Binance to Train Law Enforcement on How to Stop Crypto Crime

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is putting in place a global training program to help stop crypto criminals, Matthew Price, the exchange’s head of intelligence and investigations in the Americas, told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” program on Monday,

“It’s the first industry-led initiative to provide training to law enforcement, regulators [and] prosecutors around the world, to tackle financial crimes and crimes that may occur using cryptocurrency,” Price, a former Internal Revenue Service agent, said. 

“It’s important to have law enforcement have the ability to investigate these crimes, and one of the ways you do that is [by] demystifying crypto,” Price said. “Explaining how to investigate it, how to request information from cryptocurrency exchanges, how to use that information, how to interpret it and how to work with the industry to tackle the bad actors out there.”

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Gets Hearing on New Trial

Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes is due back in court this month to make the case that she deserves a new trial based on her allegations that the government manipulated testimony from a key witness who testified against her.

The hearing was granted Monday by the judge who presided over Ms. Holmes’s monthslong criminal-fraud trial. The ruling represents a victory for Ms. Holmes in her quest to secure a new trial nine months after a jury convicted her on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. Her attorneys have argued that new evidence pertaining to the witness, former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, shows the government presented misleading testimony that may have influenced the jury’s decision.

Feds Seized $311M in Bitcoin. The Crypto Hacker Stole It Back

The prosecutors accuse Harmon of a very unusual crime: remotely swiping Bitcoin stored on a computer device the government had already seized in another case, brought against his older brother, Larry. As authorities watched helplessly, 713 digital tokens—then worth almost $5 million—were somehow spirited away from the “hardware wallet” they were holding in an evidence locker.

Larry Harmon, who’s since pleaded guilty to laundering $311 million through crypto transactions, swore up and down he wasn’t involved in the disappearing act. Instead, Larry, 39, pointed the finger at Gary, 30, and ultimately helped to nail him. Gary is in federal jail in Washington, D.C., awaiting trial, and Larry is free on bail near Akron. The cases of the Harmons—literal crypto bros—show how the IRS and the FBI are succeeding in collecting evidence but still face challenges on the blockchain frontier. Authorities had to track digital money moving through a tangle of anonymous accounts to connect it to Larry. When they tried to seize it, they faced a problem: How do you put a fence around a quicksilver asset such as Bitcoin?

SEC Struggles to Stem Staff Losses as Disclosure Workload Grows

A Bloomberg Law review of Securities and Exchange Commission documents shows the agency unit in charge of corporate reporting has lost nearly a fourth of its staff since 2017 and, with replacements, its workforce has still been unable to catch up in that timespan.

The staff deficit in the Division of Corporation Finance has led Gensler to ask Congress for reinforcements. But the division still must contend with additional corporate filings to review from initial public offerings and special purpose acquisition companies, and upcoming rules that would require enhanced company disclosures on greenhouse gas emissions, cyber breaches and workforce metrics, among other things.

Ex-Dewey CFO Reaches Tentative Settlement to Resolve SEC Lawsuit

The former chief financial officer of defunct law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP has agreed to pay more than $95,000 to resolve SEC civil suit from 2014.

Joel Sanders, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in 2017 but avoided jail time, was named in the Securities and Exchange Commission complaint accusing Dewey’s senior team of fraudulently concealing the firm’s financial condition leading up to its bankruptcy.