Quebec’s Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has filed charges against PlexCoin ICO organizers, who raised $15 million through soliciting investors from the US and Canada. The Canadian provincial regulator says Dominic Lacroix, Sabrina Paradis-Royer and Yan Ouellet illegally profited from defrauding customers through unregulated investment pools.
The AMF is charging defendants with seven counts of offences and thus seeks sanctions against individuals behind alleged cryptocurrency scam.
The regulator has previously obtained a court order to freeze the assets of Lacroix and his associated company PlexCorps for arranging an ICO scheme that fraudulently touted lucrative investment returns.
The ongoing case by many financial regulators against the controversial cryptocurrency fraud seems to have no end in sight. The US SEC also charged Lacroix’s partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer, with providing pool participants with false statements that misrepresented the ICO’s profitability claiming that it would yield a 1,354 percent profit in less than a month.
The court judgment also required the defendants to forgo their rights to $4 million worth of investor funds that were seized by a receiver appointed by the Superior Court of Québec, and $800,000 frozen by U.S. courts. The US regulators are already considering distribution of some money to harmed investors but will be coordinated with the Autorité des marchés financiers.
PlexCoin describes itself as a decentralized worldwide cryptocurrency that boasts a new revolutionary operating structure to make transactions faster, easier and safer than any other cryptocurrency.
Lacroix was the target of another order by the Autorité des marchés financiers earlier in 2018. The Canadian province’s orders prohibited him and his partners from disposing of any funds, securities, or other property in connection with their activities relating to the sale of PlexCoin tokens.
The PlexCoin saga is not Lacroix’s first run-in with North American regulators. Earlier in 2013, Lacroix and his company Micro-Prêts plead guilty to six charges of fraud and a Canadian court hit them with a $25,000 fine.
“Specifically, the AMF is charging Dominic Lacroix with making distributions without a prospectus and making misrepresentations in respect of transactions in securities in connection with the PlexCoin project. The AMF is charging Sabrina Paradis-Royer and Yan Ouellet with making distributions without a prospectus in respect of transactions in securities in connection with the PlexCoin project,” the AMF further clarified the breakdown of its recent charges.
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