SEC Brings Action Against RYVYL and its Founders for Alleged Fraudulent Disclosures About Blockchain Technology

SEC Files Settled Action Against Financial Technology Company and its Founders for Alleged Fraudulent Disclosures

On April 27, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled action against RYVYL, Inc., and its two founders, former CEO, Fredi Nisan, and former chairman of the board Benzion Errez, for their respective roles in making alleged false disclosures in RYVYL’s public filings.

According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, beginning in October 2020, RYVYL, Nisan, and Errez defrauded the investing public by falsely depicting RYVYL in its public filings with the SEC as a cutting edge financial technology company that developed, marketed and sold “innovative blockchain-based payment solutions” and that its “proprietary blockchain-based technology” served as the settlement engine for all transactions within its ecosystem. The complaint alleges that, in reality, RYVYL’s actual business was reselling credit card or ACH processing services of other companies and RYVYL never processed any transactions through a blockchain technology, as it claimed in its public filings, nor did it possess any proprietary blockchain technology. The complaint further alleges that, until May 2025, RYVYL never told the public that a substantial majority of its transactions involved high-risk merchants, such as cannabis dispensaries.

Judge denies Sam Bankman-Fried new trial after financial fraud conviction

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday denied Sam Bankman-Fried a new trial, rejecting his claim that there are newly discovered witnesses who would give exculpatory testimony.

Bankman-Fried was convicted of masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in history stemming from the collapse of the crypto-exchange FTX. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

Bankman-Fried, 34, had argued to the district court judge that there are new witnesses whose testimony would warrant a new trial for him. The judge called the claim baseless.

Are prediction markets uniquely susceptible to insider trading?

The same soldier charged last week could have made big profits in oil stocks or futures if he had used his inside information to trade on stock markets instead of a prediction market. His transaction would be just one relatively small flagged trade, buried under thousands of other flagged trades that pop up on traditional markets every day.

At Kalshi, we can zero in on successful trades in highly specific markets. From a legal standpoint, it’s also somewhat easier to establish knowledge of the Maduro raid as material non-public info related to a Maduro-related prediction market contract than it would be for an oil stock or futures trade. Event contracts distill trading into a single question — narrowing the range of information relevant to a traded swap.

So, just because the use of information on prediction markets looks different doesn’t necessarily mean it is any more susceptible to insider trading. We may see different types of insiders trying to break the rules, but it also may be simpler to prove insider trading in some of these cases.

CEO Explains How He Faked Results in $300 Million Meltdown

As Gibran Huzaifah stared at the Excel spreadsheet on his laptop, he was looking into the void. eFishery, the Indonesian startup he’d built from a fish-feeding prototype to a 100-employee extension of himself, was just three months away from running out of cash.

Slowly, he started plugging fake numbers into the financial report. Within an hour, he had done what five years of hard work couldn’t — turn his business into a winner, at least on paper. He hit the send button to show his investors, certain he’d get caught.

Only he didn’t…. […]

Six years after that move to start a second set of accounts — a real one for his team and a second, inflated book for investors — eFishery was one of Asia’s brightest startups with a valuation of $1.4 billion and around 2,000 staff. As well as providing automated fish-feeders to boost productivity, it had also expanded into financing services.

By the time it collapsed, the scheme had metastasized into a multinational web of fake shell companies and padded accounts. The company claimed revenues of $752 million in the first nine months of 2024, while the true number was just $157 million, according to an internal investigation.

The Gag Rule Case: Thomas J. Powell, et al. v. SEC

If you’re like me, you spend more time than you planned on supremecourt.gov and scotusblog.com.

Kind of a symptom of practicing in and around DC.

What’s recently caught my attention: Thomas J. Powell, et al. v. SEC, No. 25-1100.
More than a dozen amicus briefs filed in support of the cert petition. That’s a lot of voices weighing in at this stage.

—The case is about SEC Rule 202.5(e), sometimes deemed the “Gag Rule.” It’s the agency’s practice of requiring people who settle with the SEC to agree, as a condition of resolution, that they will never publicly dispute the agency’s allegations. Ever. Even in the most innocent way.

—The First Amendment questions it raises are ones the legal community has been watching for a while.
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