A judge has rejected the appeal of a promoter accused in an $18 million cryptocurrency fraud case.
A federal judge in Utah has denied an appeal to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against the promoters of a fraudulent cryptocurrency mining company that carried out an $18 million scheme.
Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen on Nov. 26 denied Kristoffer Krohn’s request to appeal the Sept. 23 ruling to allow the SEC’s lawsuit against Green United LLC, stating that Krohn had no grounds for appeal. He said he couldn’t present it.
“The court declined to grant this case an interlocutory appeal because Mr. Cron did not present a substantive basis for disagreement with the governing law governing all issues addressed by the court in its September 23 order,” the judge wrote. .
In his motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Cron said the SEC failed to prove that the green boxes provided by Green United were investment contracts as the regulator alleged in its complaint.
Excerpt from Judge Allen’s order denying Kristoffer Krohn’s motion for interlocutory appeal. Source: Pacer
He also argued that the SEC confused the elements of the Howey test that define securities.
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But Judge Allen said it was a mistake to argue that Krohn chose terms from two separate definitions and did not provide “legal support to show that the court adopted the definitions.”
In 2023, the SEC reported that Green United executives made $18 million from investors between April 2018 and December 2022 by selling investments in “green boxes” and “green nodes” that regulators said actually mined Bitcoin. accused of running a fraudulent cryptocurrency mining scheme.
According to the SEC complaint, investors were told that the company was developing a green blockchain and that GREEN tokens would increase in value based on efforts that would generate large returns.
The SEC claims that the Green Blockchain never existed, and that Green tokens were created after the first hardware was sold to investors and distributed periodically to make the operation appear successful.
Green United founder Wright Thurston also made a separate bid to have the lawsuit dismissed.
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