Bitcoin Still Booming, Despite Challenges
Despite headlines centered on challenges facing the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is still booming with some of the highest mining and transaction rates in its history. The digital currency has yet to find the “killer app” that would make it an essential part of the average consumer’s Internet toolkit. Several bitcoin-related services shut down in recent months, […]
Vermont Man Charged By SEC For Operating Ponzi Scheme
Homero Joshua Garza of Brattleboro, Vermont faces federal charges alleging that he operated a Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of investors. The SEC charged Garza and his two Bitcoin-mining companies, GAW Miners LLC and ZenMiner LLC, with running the scheme. The companies sold $20 million worth of what appeared to be shares in Hashlets, digital […]
Texas Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme Operator Pleads Guilty To Securities Fraud
Trendon Shavers, a 33-year-old from McKinney, Texas who operated a Ponzi scheme using the virtual currency bitcoin, pleaded guilty to securities fraud this week. Shavers started a company, called Bitcoin Savings & Trust, in 2011 which he used to acquire bitcoins from potential investors via the web, telling them he would pay investors one percent […]
Texan Charged In First Bitcoin Securities Fraud Case
Trendon Shavers of McKinney, Texas, operator of Bitcoin Savings and Trust, was charged yesterday with defrauding investors in what authorities are calling the first federal criminal securities fraud case arising from a bitcoin-related Ponzi scheme. Shavers is charged with misappropriating roughly 146,000 of 764,000 bitcoins, at the time worth over $4.5 million, which he had […]
Texas Judge Awards $40.7 In Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme Case
Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant, a federal judge in Texas, ordered Bitcoin Savings and Trust and its owner, Trendon Shavers, to pay $40.7 million after the SEC proved that the company, which sold investments using bitcoins, was in reality a Ponzi scheme. According to Mazzant, Shavers “knowingly and intentionally” used the company “as […]