The amount of money that people involved in crypto scams and other irregularities have to pay as penalties to regulators and watchdogs is increasing year after year. After justice has been done, these institutions obtain money for their enforcement actions, which is a positive development in a society that is still fighting against crypto-related crimes.

In this particular case, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) obtained more than $1.3 billion as a result of administrative penalties in the fiscal year 2019. The number includes funds collected from cryptocurrency operators and other entities or organizations.

Monetary Relief for the Financial Regulator

The information can be found on the CFTC’s yearly report for 2019. According to the document, the watchdog got funds thanks to the enforcement of the law. Among the monetary relief forms were civil penalties, restitution, and disgorgement.

The exact amount of the monetary relief received by the CFTC was $1,321,046,710, which would be an increment of 39% over 2018, the previous fiscal year. The precise number of regulatory penalties imparted by the institution wasn’t specified in the mentioned report.

The report outlines a number of charges involving fraud with Bitcoin (BTC.) The world’s premier cryptocurrency was one of the preferred means used by scammers and cybercriminals to defraud people.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission emphasized the Control-Finance Ltd crypto scheme of $147 million, famous for defrauding over a thousand investors worldwide. Roughly 22,858 BTC were laundered.

Another famous case was the one against Jon Barry Thompson, which was a civil case. The man was accused of defrauding investors with $7 million worth of Bitcoin. Joseph King was also accused of illicit proceedings whilst gaining possession of considerable amounts of Bitcoin and Litecoin (LTC.) His fine was worth $1.1 million.

“The Division successfully litigated the cases involving digital assets it had previously charged, obtaining, among other things, rulings affirming the Commission’s authority to prosecute fraud and manipulation involving digital assets that satisfy the statutory definition of a commodity,” per information found on the report.

69 Enforcement Actions in Total

In total, the institution filed 69 enforcement actions, a slightly higher number than the five-year average of 67.5.

A few weeks ago, the new chairman of the CFTC Heath Tarbert expressed the need for the institution to take a “principles-based regulation” approach for cryptocurrencies. He stated that by doing that, it would mean that the organization would move away from detailed rules and would depend on high-level and “broadly-stated principles” as they define the standards for regulated firms and products.

Late last month, the CFTC gave LabCFTC, its associated fintech research arm, status as an independent operating department. After the “promotion,” the fintech branch began to report directly to Tarbert, who announced at the time that “blockchain, digital assets, and other developments hold great promise for our economy. Now is the time for LabCFTC to play an even greater role as we work to develop and write the rules for these transformative new products.”

By Andres Chavez

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here