On Oct. 9, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a subpoena enforcement action in California against an investment trust that failed to respond to an investigative subpoena issued by the staff. The investigation focused on a claim by a penny stock, Cherubim, that it had allegedly executed a $100 million financing commitment to launch an ICO. In another SEC action reported on Oct. 11, 2018, the SEC obtained a court order preventing an ICO that falsely claimed it was approved by the SEC and that a related cryptocurrency fund was " licensed and regulated" by the agency. Also, a newly unsealed federal indictment charges seven alleged Russian intelligence agents with using cryptocurrencies as part of a broad "influence and disinformation" scheme. And the CFTC has posted a rise in fines in the past fiscal year ending Sept. 30, of approximately $900 million, buoyed by cryptocurrency cases, spoofing cases and settlements dating back to the financial crisis.
According to a recent Reuters article citing a report from CipherTrace, in the first nine months of 2018, hackers stole $927 million in cryptocurrencies from exchanges and trading platforms. A recently released report from bitcoin analytics firm Elliptic provided details on the hack of a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange and demonstrated how the cryptocurrency funds stolen in the attack may have been laundered.
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