Goodman & Nekvasil P.A. May Recover Investor Losses – AriseBank ICO Shut Down by SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a court order halting AriseBank, an allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) that targeted retail investors to fund what it claimed to be the world’s first “decentralized bank.” According to the SEC, AriseBank and its co-founders Jared Rice Sr. and Stanley Ford allegedly offered and sold unregistered investments in their purported “AriseCoin” cryptocurrency by depicting AriseBank as a first-of-its-kind decentralized bank offering a variety of consumer-facing banking products and services using more than 700 different virtual currencies. AriseBank’s sales pitch claimed that it developed an algorithmic trading application that automatically trades in various cryptocurrencies.
According to the SEC complaint, AriseBank ICO is an illegal offering of securities because there is no registration statement filed or in effect with the SEC, nor is there an applicable exemption from registration. According to the complaint, the AriseCoin ICO is a general solicitation that uses statements posted on the Internet and distributed throughout the world – including the United States. According to the complaint, these marketing efforts include statements made through websites the Defendants control and through various social media accounts, video and radio interviews, and even a celebrity endorsement.
The SEC reports that a court approved an emergency asset freeze over AriseBank, Rice, and Ford and appointed a receiver over AriseBank, including over its digital assets. The SEC claims to have intervened to protect the digital assets before they could be dissipated, enabling the receiver to immediately secure various cryptocurrencies held by AriseBank including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitshares, Dogecoin, and BitUSD. According to the SEC, AriseCoin’s public sale began around Dec. 26, 2017, and was originally scheduled to conclude on Jan. 27, 2018, with distribution to investors on Feb. 10, 2018. The SEC claims to seek preliminary and permanent injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest and penalties, and bars against Rice and Ford to prohibit them from serving as officers or directors of a public company or offering digital securities again in the future.
If you purchased your AriseBank investment from a licensed financial advisor, Goodman & Nekvasil, P.A. can help you. Goodman & Nekvasil, P.A., a Clearwater, Florida, law firm with a national practice representing victimized investors, has filed hundreds of cases against brokerage firms selling high-risk or fraudulent investments such as AriseBank, and has recovered more than $180 million dollars on behalf of victimized investors.
All our cases are handled on a purely contingency fee basis by Kalju Nekvasil, Esq., formerly regional counsel with the NASD, now known as FINRA. Kalju Nekvasil, Esq. has practiced in this area of the law for more than 35 years.
There is no charge for an evaluation of your case. Further, we handle our cases on a contingency fee basis. This means that unless we recover money for you, we charge no attorney’s fee. Unless you recover any money, you pay us nothing, not even the costs and expenses which the firm will advance on your behalf. Finally, the filing of such a case should not affect your ownership of your AriseBank investment.
If you incurred losses on your investment in AriseBank and would like your case evaluated by a securities attorney (again, there is no charge for an evaluation and all cases are handled on a purely contingency fee basis), please contact us.
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