U.S. commodities regulators said Thursday they have charged a California resident and his business with allegedly defrauding investors out of more than $1.3 million in funds intended to go to digital-asset commodity and foreign-exchange trading.
The... U.S. commodities regulators said Thursday they have charged a California resident and his business with allegedly defrauding investors out of more than $1.3 million in funds intended to go to digital-asset commodity and foreign-exchange trading. The CFTC said it was its first case involving a scam known as “pig butchering,” which is growing in popularity, it said. The authorities did not specify which digital-asset commodities were involved, but by commonly seen definitions they include cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens.
“As people sought to escape the isolation of the pandemic and form a connection to others online, fraudsters saw a new venue to prey on and to take advantage of the public,” the CFTC’s director of enforcement Ian McGinley said in a statement.