The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that Centra Tech Inc. co-founder, Raymond Trapani, has been charged with fraud charges resulting from the SEC’s investigations into Centra’s controversial $32 million USD initial coin offering (ICO). Mr. Trapani is the third and final Centra co-founder to be charged for having a role in the ICO.
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“Mastermind” Centra Co-Founder Charged for Involvement With “Fraudulent” ICO
Raymond Trapani, a co-founder of Centra Tech Inc., has been charged by the SEC for his involvement in “a fraudulent scheme related to Centra’s 2017 ICO.” Last year, Centra made headlines after enlisting celebrity endorsements from Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled. The other two co-founders of the company, Sohrab “Sam” Sharma and Robert Farkas, were charged by authorities earlier this month for their involvement in the distribution of “CTR Tokens” to investors.
An amended version of the SEC’s complaint claims that Trapani was the “mastermind of Centra’s fraudulent ICO,” with an SEC press release alleging that “Centra [was] marketed with claims about nonexistent business relationships with major credit card companies, fictional executive bios, and misrepresentations about the viability of the company’s core financial services products.”
The SEC also accuses Mr. Trapani and Mr. Sharma of “manipulat[ing] trading in the CTR Tokens to generate interest in the company and prop up the price of the tokens.”
SEC Charges Trapani Charged for Violating Securities Laws
The amended complaint charges Trapani with violating the anti-fraud and registration provisions of U.S. federal securities laws, with the SEC seeking “permanent injunctions, the return of allegedly ill-gotten gains plus interest and penalties, as well as bars against Trapani prohibiting him from serving as a public company
