The Return of Blue Horseshoe

SEC Charges Three Chicago-Area Residents with Insider Trading Around Equifax Data Breach Announcement

The SEC’s complaint, filed in the Northern District of Georgia, states that Equifax engaged a Chicago-based public relations firm in August 2017 to assist with handling the inquiries expected to be generated by the announcement of the intrusion and breach. According to the complaint, Ann M. Dishinger, who worked as a finance manager at the public relations firm, learned about the Equifax breach through her position and tipped her significant other, Lawrence M. Palmer (L. Palmer), with the nonpublic news. The SEC alleges that L. Palmer then contacted a former business client and arranged for the client to purchase out-of-the-money Equifax put options in the client’s brokerage account with the understanding that the client and L. Palmer would split any trading profits obtained. The complaint also alleges that L. Palmer later reimbursed the client by check for the purchase cost of the options, scribbling in the check’s memo line the words, “Blue Horseshoe,” an apparent reference to the coded language used to convey inside information in the 1987 movie Wall Street….

SEC Sues Three Entities and Their Founder for Unregistered Crypto Asset Securities Offerings

The SEC alleges that in 2017, Roets, Dragonchain, and the Foundation conducted an unregistered offering of Dragon tokens (“DRGN”) in two phases: (1) a discounted “presale” in August 2017 to members of a crypto investment club, and (2) an initial coin offering (“ICO”) in October and November 2017 marketed predominately to crypto investors. Through this offering, the defendants allegedly raised approximately $14 million from approximately 5,000 investors around the world, including the United States. According to the SEC’s complaint, the defendants marketed the offering to crypto investors, and their personnel and agents publicly discussed DRGN’s investment value, pricing, and “listing” on trading platforms, among other things. Then, between 2019 and 2022, Roets, Dragonchain, the Foundation, and TDC allegedly offered and sold approximately $2.5 million worth of DRGNs to cover business expenditures to further develop and market Dragonchain technology, some of which occurred after a state regulator found DRGNs to be securities.Source: 

Elon Musk says tweet on buying Manchester United was joke

Hours after sending the internet into a frenzy with a tweet suggesting that he was buying Britain’s Manchester United soccer club, Elon Musk issued a clarification: It was all a joke.

“Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome,” the world’s richest man wrote Tuesday as a follow-up to a tweet that said he supported “the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party.”

Early Wednesday morning, Musk responded to a query on the social media platform by saying he was referencing a “long-running joke on Twitter,” and that he was “not buying any sports teams.”

US Regulator ‘Improperly’ Pushing Banks to Avoid Serving Crypto Companies, Lawmaker Says

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) may be leaning on banks to prevent them from providing services to cryptocurrency companies, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said Tuesday, citing communications he had received.

In a letter directed to Acting FDIC Director Martin Gruenberg, Toomey wrote that he had heard from “affected parties” and whistleblower communications which claimed that the federal bank regulator had tried to “deter banks from doing business with lawful cryptocurrency-related companies,” even though providing services to these companies is not illegal. Toomey asked the regulator to confirm whether any FDIC official had indeed asked banks to not do business with crypto firms, and if so, to explain why.