The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges against professional boxer Floyd MAYWEATHER JR. and music producer Khaled KHALED, known as DJ Khaled, for failing to disclose payments they received for promoting investments in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). These are the SEC’s first cases to charge touting violations involving ICOs.
The SEC’s orders found that Floyd MAYWEATHER failed to disclose promotional payments from three ICO issuers, including $100,000 from CENTRA TECH INC, and that Khaled failed to disclose a $50,000 payment from CENTRA TECH. The SEC found that Mayweather failed to disclose that he was paid $200,000 to promote the other two ICOs.
The men neither admitted nor denied the claims, but agreed to pay combined penalties totalling more than $750,000. MAYWEATHER agreed to pay $300,000 in disgorgement, a $300,000 penalty, and $14,775 in prejudgment interest. Khaled agreed to pay $50,000 in disgorgement, a $100,000 penalty, and $2,725 in prejudgment interest. In addition, MAYWEATHER agreed not to promote any securities, digital or otherwise, for three years, and KHALED agreed to a similar ban for two years.
Floyd MAYWEATHER, along with John MCAFEE, was one of those notorious ICO promoters who drove countless naive retail investors into worthless ICOs and their tokens. For large sums of money, these celebrities promoted ICOs to their fans and followers without further examination. Besides CENTRA TECH MAYWEATHER was also part of the ICO of the Israeli STOX of Moshe HOGEG and his SINGULARITEAM. The STOX ICO has received approximately USD 40 million from ICO investors.
gonna go out on a limb and call the ico top here pic.twitter.com/L8QEPD9bE8
— kif (@kifleswing) July 27, 2017
John MCAFEE was also warned by the SEC for marketing ICOs through his social channels. It is not currently known that MCAFEE would have paid penalties to the SEC.
We expect the SEC to take action against more of these celebrity promotors and also against ICO advisors who have brokered ICO’s and their tokens as unregistered securities to US retail investors.
