The Securities and Exchange Commission announced raising charges against blockchain jobs marketplace Boon.Tech and its chief executive officer Rajesh Pavithran for fraud and registration violations regarding a $5 million initial coin offering (ICO) of digital asset securities.
The US regulator alleges that from November 2017 to January 2018, Boon.Tech and its CEO raised $5 million by selling Boon Coins to over 1,500 investors in the US and worldwide. They raised funding to develop and market a platform to connect employers posting jobs with freelancers seeking work.
SEC found that the Boon Coins were sold as investment contracts and that made them securities. However, Boon.Tech and Pavithran failed to register the offering. Moreover, Pavithran and Boon.Tech made false statements like claiming that Boon.Techs’s platform eliminated digital asset markets volatility with their patent-pending technology to hedge Boon Coins against the US dollar, when in reality Boon.Tech had no such technology. Boon.Tech and Pavithran also claimed to investors that their platform was faster than their competitors because it was built on Boon.Tech’s own blockchain, when in fact the platform was developed on the same blockchain as their competitors.
