CFTC Charges Mosaic and its Founder with Fraud
Mosaic Exchange accused of running a fake crypto plan, misleading at least 17 people, says CFTC.
Crypto company Mosaic Exchange Limited and its CEO are accused of running a "fake digital money plan", lying about its riches and success, says the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The plan tricked at least 17 people in the U.S. and elsewhere into giving "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in bitcoin and other funds for trading, which were then wrongly used, the CFTC announced on Thursday.
Between February 2019 and June 2021, the CFTC says, Mosaic and its Founder, Sean Michael, wrongly claimed to be a rich crypto trading platform, boasting millions of dollars in managed assets and offering a super-profitable trading algorithm. They also lied about having business deals with big crypto platforms BitMEX and Binance.
But, "Mosaic never actually had a business deal with Binance or BitMEX," says the agency's complaint.
Some of the money from customers was wrongly used for Michael’s own spending on his restaurant and trips.
CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson declared, "The whole plan was a fake, a digital house of cards," revealing that Mosaic only pretended to engage in futures, swaps, and various transaction types under deceptive appearances.
