$2.7 Million to be Repaid to Investors by AriseBank on Defrauding Charges
AriseBank, a Dallas-based crypto startup has been ordered to repay its investors to the tune of $2.7 million due to allegations that the startup was defrauding their investors.
Authorities have finally put an end to the ongoing AriseBank saga that has been hanging over the heads of the startup’s founders Stanley Ford and Jared Rice for almost a year.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday has ordered the AriseBank founders to pay back its investors who believed that their money was to be used to create a cryptocurrency bank, which never actually came to fruition.
Arisebank was planning their AriseCoin ICO with the aim of raising $1 billion, but was closed down in January by the SEC for rogue practices and allegedly lying to their investors.
Shamoil T. Shipchandler, the director of the Fort Worth SEC office, came out in January to make a statement in regards to the alleged fraudulent activities of AriseBank saying:
“Rice and Ford lied to AriseBank’s investors by pitching the company as a first-of-its-kind decentralized bank offering its own cryptocurrency for customer products and services.”
The SEC have now ordered both Ford and Rice to repay back the investments of various investors and have issued a lifetime crypto and ICO ban on the pair of rogue COOs. Apparently, the duo is yet to admit or deny the fraud allegations from the SEC, but they have agreed to pay almost $2.6 million back to investors alongside a further $68,423 in interest.
Both Ford and Rice will be fined a further sum of $184,767 apiece and have ensured the SEC that they won’t be taking part in any crypto-asset based fraud in the future.
AriseBank is one of the first cryptocurrency based projects that have been targeted and sued by US regulators, which is setting a much-needed precedent.
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