The court sentenced Michael Alan Stollery, the CEO of Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS), to four years and three months in prison. The Department of Justice said.
In July 2022, a California resident pleaded guilty to participating in an ICO fraud scheme that raised $21 million.
From 2017 to 2018, the founder of TBIS touted the platform as ‘an opportunity to invest in cryptocurrencies’.
According to the DOJ, Stollery was a ‘key figure’ in the scheme. He lured investors to buy the BAR token through a ‘string of false and misleading statements’.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit in May 2018 over TBIS’s activities. The regulator alleged that Stollery and his company violated anti-fraud provisions and federal securities laws.
He also did not register the coin offering in accordance with SEC requirements. He also posted fake customer testimonials on the site and claimed to have business relationships with the Federal Reserve System.
During the hearings, Stollery admitted to falsifying aspects of the white paper, including the token’s purpose and deployment technologies, differences from other tokens, and profitability prospects.
Under the case, the founder of TBIS faced up to 20 years in prison.
Earlier in July 2021, the founders of the cryptocurrency project Dropil pleaded guilty to an ICO fraud involving nearly $1.9 million.
In December 2022, the SEC charged Thor Technologies and its executives in an unregistered securities offering worth $2.6 million.