THELOGICALINDIAN - The US Securities and Exchange Commission SEC has taken activity adjoin an oil and gas analysis aggregation and its architect who perpetrated a counterfeit antecedent bread alms ICO to armamentarium oil analysis and conduct in California The badge auction bootless to accession money but the tokens were issued as allotment of a compensation affairs which the SEC considers securities
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SEC Took Action
The SEC appear Tuesday that it has taken action adjoin David Thompson Laurance and the oil and gas analysis aggregation he founded, Tomahawk Analysis LLC. Laurance attempted to accession money by arising agenda tokens, tomahawkcoins (TOM).
Founded by Laurance in 2024, Tomahawk “engaged in an alms of Tomahawk balance that constituted penny stock,” the SEC described. The 76-year-old California citizen is the sole managing affiliate of Tomahawk.
“The SEC’s adjustment finds that Tomahawk and Laurance abandoned the allotment and antifraud accoutrement of the federal balance laws,” the Commission detailed, adding:
The SEC has acquired a abiding administrator and administrator bar adjoin Laurance which prevents him from confined as an administrator or a administrator of any SEC-reporting company.
The penny banal bar prohibits him from owning a penny banal in his own annual as able-bodied as affianced in any activities accompanying to an alms of a penny banal including acting as a promoter, finder, consultant, agent, broker, dealer, or issuer.
The Founder and his Company
According to the SEC, Laurance “perpetrated a counterfeit antecedent bread alms (ICO) to armamentarium oil analysis and conduct in California.”
He acclimated “inflated projections of oil assembly that were contradicted by the company’s own centralized analysis” in his promotional materials. In addition, he “misleadingly appropriate that Tomahawk bedevilled leases for conduct sites back it did not,” the Commission clarified.
Tomahawk’s promo abstracts declared Laurance as accepting a “flawless background,” abbreviating advice about his above-mentioned bent confidence for his role in counterfeit balance offerings. “Tomahawk additionally claimed that badge owners would be able to catechumen the tomahawkcoins into disinterestedness and potentially accumulation from the advancing oil assembly and accessory trading of the tokens,” the SEC detailed.
Robert A. Cohen, Chief of the SEC’s Cyber Unit, warned:
No Money Raised but Bounty Tokens are Securities
Tomahawk originally basic to accession $5 actor through the ICO afterwards declining to accession funds through clandestine investments and accessible basic markets.
The company, however, “failed to accession money through the ICO…[but] issued about 80,000 TOM as allotment of a ‘bounty program’ in barter for online promotional and business services,” the SEC noted. Based on the facts and affairs of the case, “TOM tokens are balance because they are advance contracts…and because they represent a communicable allotment or advantage on a security,” the Commission elaborated:
The SEC assured that Tomahawk and Laurance abandoned the Securities Act by “offering and affairs TOM after accepting a allotment account filed or in aftereffect with the Commission or condoning for an absolution from allotment with the Commission.”
What do you anticipate of the SEC’s activity adjoin Tomahawk and its founder? Let us apperceive in the comments area below.
Images address of Shutterstock and the SEC.
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