Titanium Blockchain Pleads Guilty to $21 Million Cryptocurrency Fraud
Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS) has pleaded guilty to a securities fraud involving over $21 million in crypto fraud. The US Department of Justice had announced that Michael Alan Stollery, CEO and founder of Titanium Blockchain, has pleaded guilty to the $21 million Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud.
Michael, who is from California, had accepted that he falsified details about the BAR coin, which is a crowdfunding token that was not registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The court documents allege that Michael had endorsed TBIS as a cryptocurrency opportunity.
He had attracted investors to buy the BAR token or coin offered by TBIS’s ICO through many false and misleading claims. After pleading guilty to securities fraud, Michael will face up to 20 years in prison.
Sentencing is scheduled for November 18 in federal district court. The Titanium ICO has defrauded investors in the US and in other parts of the world until the SEC halted the offering after forcing a court order in May 2018.
Titan defrauded crypto investors by promoting fake links with Apple, Boeing and IBM
Michael Stollery had launched TBIS as a new company and supported the coin with many false claims and intentions. It also promoted false and non-existent relationships with companies such as Apple, Boeing and IBM.
It was the case that some of the partners had complained and Stollery simply responded by saying, “I didn’t know that a procedure had to be followed, etc.” Titanium Blockchain has also offered many of these supposedly trademarked services for which it has never registered.
The list of these non-trademarks consists of absurd terms such as “company as a service”, however, this term has also been used outside of blockchain scams. Michael also admitted that he made false claims about aspects of Titanium ICO’s whitepaper. Along with false customer testimonials, he even stated that Titanium has a business relationship with the Federal Reserve.
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Detailed lies about the offer’s profitability
The Department of Justice stated that the CEO has admitted to luring investors by advertising false aspects of white papers including selling false explanations of the crypto investment offering.
These explanations included selling false and untrue claims about the purpose and technology behind the offer.
Along with that, TBIS continued to state a fictitious unique selling point for the ICO compared to other crypto opportunities and prospects.
Titanium Blockchain had registered a minimum of 75 people who had paid in cash and more people who chose to pay via crypto. Those who paid with crypto apparently gave close to $21 million.
Of this amount, at least $200,000 had directly hit the CEO’s bank account.
Not only running an unregistered ICO, the CEO of Titanium blockchain had admitted to using investor funds to pay credit card bills for his Hawaii condominium.
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Featured image from UnSplash, chart from TradingView.com
