U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet of the Southern District of New York has ordered “Coin Signals,” a crypto scammer, to pay $2.8 million to his victims.
With this ruling, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has closed its action against Jeremy Spence, who previously faced charges this year for operating a Ponzi scheme in which he marketed investments in digital assets such as bitcoin and ether from December 2017 through April 2019.
A 42-month prison term was handed down to Jeremy Spence back in May of this year.
The court’s consent order states:
“Spence’s solicitations-which, as described below, were rife with fraud, lies, and deceit-were successful. During the Relevant Period, Spence obtained virtual currencies such as bitcoin and ether worth more than approximately $5 million at the time from individual customers comprising approximately 175 user accounts.”
At the same time as the order was issued, CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson issued a statement praising the agency’s enforcement and calling for expanded regulatory authority for the CFTC.
Regulators Taking Down Crypto Players
Johnson’s comments come as the CFTC, which she oversees, works with the Senate Agriculture Committee to advance legislation that would allow greater direct monitoring from crypto commodity derivatives exchanges, a procedure that has gotten more difficult since the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
Johnson has pointed out for weeks now in defense of her organization that LedgerX, the part of the FTX business network that the CFTC does control directly, has remained financially stable.
Concerns about regulatory inadequacies were also voiced by CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam in his testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee on December 1.
Back in September, the same United States market regulator fined bZeroX and its founders, Tom Bean and Kyle Kistner, $250,000 through the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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