The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun with fraud, alleging that he and his companies Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation, and Rainberry conspired to distribute billions of cryptocurrency assets and artificially inflated trading volumes since August 2017.
The SEC also accused Sun of concealing payment to eight celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan and Soulja Boy, to illegally promote #TRX and #BTT on social media accounts, misleading the public into thinking they had "unbiased interest in TRX and BTT, and were not merely paid spokespersons."
The SEC claims that Sun's activity generated tens of millions of dollars of illegal profit at the expense of other investors. All celebrities charged, except Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone, agreed to settle, without admitting wrongdoing, and paid a total of more than $400,000.
The SEC has been increasing efforts to crack down on the cryptocurrency industry, which SEC Chair Gary Gensler has called a "Wild West" riddled with misconduct.