No Easy Out: Federal Judge Says Selling Digital Tokens May Violate Federal Securities Laws

Just this week, a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York told a defendant in a criminal case that he was out luck with the claim there was no securities fraud because he was selling  digital tokens.  See United States v. Zaslavskiy, Case Number 1:17-cr-00647 (E.D.N.Y.). The defendant tried to argue that the digital tokens were not securities.  The court was simply not buying what the defendant was now selling.  The case involved claims the defendant bilked investors in ICOs.  The court refused to say that the tokens were not securities at such an early stage in the case, and believed it was up to the jury to make that determination. This decision highlights the very fact intensive nature of determining if the federal securities laws apply to these types of digital token fraud claims.  Essentially, the court was relying upon the United States Supreme Court’s SEC v.  W. J.…

Read more detail on Recent Securities Law posts –

This entry was posted in Securities Law and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply