SEC Alleges Crypto Asset Fraud Scheme Involving "Proprietary AI-Based Trading Bots"

SEC Charges Texas Resident in Alleged Multi-Million Dollar Crypto Asset Fraud Scheme

On May 28, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Nathan Fuller, a resident of Cypress, Texas, in a crypto asset trading scheme in which Fuller allegedly raised approximately $12.3 million from about 150 investors based on various misrepresentations and omissions, including that he would use proprietary AI-based trading bots to engage in high-frequency arbitrage trading in crypto assets.

According to the SEC’s complaint, from at least October 2022 through mid-2024, Fuller offered and sold joint-venture interests in a crypto asset trading scheme through his company, Privvy Investments, LLC, and under the assumed business names Privvy Investments and Gateway Digital Investments. As alleged, Fuller falsely promised some investors that their investments would generate returns of more than 40-50% within 30 to 45 days and falsely claimed that investors stood to make guaranteed profits exceeding 100% in as little as 21 days. Fuller allegedly made various misrepresentations to investors, including that he would use AI-based trading bots to engage in high-frequency arbitrage trading on crypto asset trading platforms, that investor funds were secured by a surety bond, insured by the FDIC, and protected by a professional-liability insurance policy. According to the complaint, Fuller’s bots did not function as represented and Fuller misappropriated at least $6.2 million of investor funds for personal expenses, used approximately $5.5 million of investor funds to make Ponzi-like payments, and lulled investors using fake account statements and fabricated correspondence from phony entities.

Repealing Gary Gensler’s Climate Rule

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins is doing yeoman’s work paring back his predecessor Gary Gensler’s overreaches. On Friday Mr. Atkins moved to rescind the agency’s 885-page climate disclosure rule that was a scourge on the U.S. economy. […]

The Trump SEC says the rule conflicted with the agency’s longstanding materiality standard for public reporting. For most companies, the climate disclosures aren’t relevant to performance and might even obscure material information in filings. The burdensome disclosures and litigation risks could also deter companies from going public.

U.S. initial public offerings last year surged 50% and are off to a strong start this year. By removing needless regulations, the Trump SEC is fertilizing public markets for growth.

Look What Happened to NFTs. Look What Happened to the Metaverse. Look What Happened to Blockchain. Crypto Is Next.

NFTs: 95% to zero. 23 million people left holding worthless tokens, and the images are now literally vanishing off dead servers.

Web3 and the metaverse: Meta lit more than $80 billion on fire. Disney, Walmart, Microsoft, and Tencent built their virtual worlds, looked around at billion-dollar ghost towns with a few dozen daily visitors, and walked out.

Blockchain — the foundation under all of it: Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle examined the “blockchain revolution” and have ignored all the hype, betting their futures instead on AI and the cloud. More than 1,500 of the world’s top engineers told Congress it was “poorly suited for just about every purpose” it was sold for. And if blockchain went away tomorrow, no one would care or even notice.

Three acts. Tree promises that it could never disappear. Three disappearances.
And now for the main event: Crypto. More than 13.4 million tokens already dead. A $2.2 trillion wipeout in 2022 that should have been the final warning. Instead, here is the part that is most terrifying and cannot be overstated:

The only reason that 2022 crypto-crash didn’t take down your bank, paycheck, and retirement savings was a formidable firewall — guardrails deliberately engineered by US regulators to protect investors and to keep the casino fire away from the real economy.

That firewall is being torn down right now. Brick by brick. By one man in particular. Paul Atkins — Chairman of the SEC…

Rare Securities Fraud Jury Verdicts Test High-Stakes Strategy

The high risks and potential benefits—to both companies and investors—of taking securities fraud class actions to a jury were on full display in three rare trials that concluded over two recent months.

Verdicts left Vaxart Inc. investors empty-handed in their suit against a hedge fund that sold its majority stake in the vaccine developer, and denied recovery to Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders over accounting disclosures. On the other side of the ledger, a jury ordered Elon Musk to pay Twitter Inc. investors their losses—still to be assessed but potentially topping $2 billion—attributed to a pair of social media posts he made before acquiring the company. Musk has vowed to appeal.

These highly variable outcomes—where plaintiffs end up with either nothing or big potential paydays—are very different from the single-digit percentages investors often recover in settlements. Despite the risk, litigants on both sides may develop more appetite for class trials.

The SEC hasn’t become more of an ally

For those navigating investigations and settlement negotiations, a few things worth knowing:

Despite the change, the SEC hasn’t become more of an ally. The agency will continue to decline comment on ongoing investigations, even if a reporter has bad information. For many, “declined to comment” becomes “must be true.” Or at least “must be serious.”

While settling parties can now push back on the SEC’s account while accepting a penalty, stakeholders will still want to know what the company believes happened, what it disputes specifically, and why it chose to pay anyway. A denial that doesn’t answer those questions invites more scrutiny than silence would have.

The rescission is retroactive. The agency won’t seek to enforce silence requirements against companies that settled years ago. Most of them should stay quiet anyway. Relitigating a past SEC action reminds every stakeholder that the company was once under investigation in the first place and raises an obvious question: why are you saying this now?

The investigation and pre-settlement period are still critical. The policy rescission doesn’t change the fact that narrative damage often happens long before any settlement is on the table. Companies that wait until the announcement to start communications planning are already behind.