CFTC Charges Two Individuals With Multi-Million Dollar Digital Asset Pump-And-Dump Scheme - First Manipulative Scheme Charged By CFTC Involving Digital Assets
Date
05/03/2021
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York charging businessman and computer programmer John McAfee, previously of Tennessee, and his former employee Jimmy Gale Watson, previously of California, for engaging in a manipulative and deceptive digital asset “pump-and-dump” scheme.
According to the complaint, the defendants secretly accumulated positions in digital assets, deceptively promoted the digital assets through social media as valuable long-term investments, then sold their holdings as prices rose sharply following McAfee’s deceptive endorsements, resulting in profits in excess of $2 million. The scheme involved numerous digital assets, including verge (XVG), dogecoin (DOGE), and reddcoin (RDD). This enforcement action is the first brought by the CFTC for a manipulative scheme involving digital assets.