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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday charged New York-based crypto startup Unicoin, Inc. and several of its top executives with defrauding thousands of investors through false claims about crypto-related investment offerings.
The SEC’s complaint accuses Unicoin and three senior executives—CEO and Chairman Alex Konanykhin, former President Silvina Moschini, and former Chief Investment Officer Alex Dominguez—of making misleading statements about certificates that purportedly gave investors rights to receive Unicoin tokens, a digital asset the company promoted as the “next generation” of cryptocurrency.
“We allege that Unicoin and its executives exploited thousands of investors with fictitious promises that its tokens, when issued, would be backed by real-world assets,” said Mark Cave, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “But as we allege, the real estate assets were worth a mere fraction of what the company claimed.”
According to the SEC, Unicoin promoted the certificates aggressively—advertising in airports, on thousands of New York City taxis, and across television and social media—and claimed the tokens were backed by billions of dollars in real estate and equity stakes in pre-IPO companies—private firms that sell shares to select investors before going public. In reality, the assets were “never worth more than a small fraction” of that, the SEC said.
Unicoin and its executives allegedly convinced more than 5,000 investors to buy into the scheme using claims that the offerings were registered with U.S. authorities, when in fact they were not. The company reportedly claimed to have sold more than $3 billion in rights certificates but had raised no more than $110 million.
The SEC also alleges that Konanykhin unlawfully sold nearly 38 million rights certificates himself—often to investors barred from the official offering—undermining the company’s exemption from federal registration requirements.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Unicoin, Konanykhin, Moschini and Dominguez of violating antifraud provisions of federal securities laws. It also seeks civil penalties, the return of ill-gotten gains, and officer-and-director bans for the three executives.
Unicoin’s general counsel, Richard Devlin, was also charged with negligently making false statements in offering documents. He agreed to settle without admitting or denying the allegations and will pay a $37,500 penalty.
