[Image: crowdfundinsider]

The SEC today announced it obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.

The SEC Complaint charges a recidivist Quebec securities law violator, Dominic Lacroix, and his company, PlexCorps, with marketing and selling securities called PlexCoin on the internet to investors in the U.S. and elsewhere, while claiming that investments in PlexCoin would yield a 1,354% profit in less than 29 days. The SEC also charged Lacroix's partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer, in this scheme.

Today's charges are the first filed by the SEC's new Cyber Unit - created in September to focus the Enforcement Division's cyber-related expertise on misconduct involving distributed ledger technology and initial coin offerings, the spread of false information through electronic and social media, hacking and threats to trading platforms. Robert Cohen heads up the Cyber Unit.

The SEC’s complaint charges Lacroix, Paradis-Royer and PlexCorps with violating the anti-fraud provisions, and Lacroix and PlexCorps with violating the registration provision, of the U.S. federal securities laws.  The complaint seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement plus interest and penalties.  For Lacroix, the SEC also seeks an officer-and-director bar and a bar from offering digital securities against Lacroix and Paradis-Royer.