(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced settled charges against Loci Inc. and its CEO John Wise for making materially false and misleading statements\u00a0in connection with an unregistered offer and sale of digital asset securities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the SEC’s order, Loci provided an intellectual property search service for inventors and others users through its software platform called InnVenn.\u00a0 The SEC\u2019s order finds that from August 2017 through January 2018,\u00a0Loci and Wise raised $7.6 million<\/strong> from investors by offering and selling digital tokens called \u201cLOCIcoin.\u201d\u00a0 As stated in the order, in promoting the ICO, Loci and Wise made numerous materially false statements to investors and potential investors, including false statements concerning the company\u2019s revenues, number of employees, and InnVenn\u2019s user base.\u00a0 The order finds that Wise misused $38,163 in investor proceeds to pay his personal expenses.\u00a0 The order also finds that although LOCIcoins constituted securities, Loci\u2019s offering was not registered with the SEC and no exemption from registration applied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLoci and its CEO misled investors regarding critical aspects of Loci\u2019s business,\u201d said Kristina Littman, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division\u2019s Cyber Unit. \u201cInvestors in digital asset securities are entitled to truthful information and fulsome disclosures so they can make informed investment decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The SEC\u2019s order finds that Wise and Loci violated the antifraud provisions of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder and Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, and the registration provisions of Sections 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, Loci and Wise agreed to a cease and desist order and to undertakings to destroy their remaining tokens, request the removal of the tokens from trading platforms, publish the SEC\u2019s order on Loci\u2019s social media channels, and refrain from participating in future digital asset securities offerings. The SEC\u2019s order also imposes a $7.6 million civil penalty against Loci, and an officer and director bar as to Wise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced settled charges against Loci Inc. and its CEO John Wise for making materially false and misleading statements\u00a0in connection with an unregistered offer and sale of digital asset securities. According to the SEC’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,16048],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-networks-press-releases","category-hedgeco-news","category-hedgecovest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78588,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78587\/revisions\/78588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}