The The states Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking a default judgement confronting token sale platform ICOBox and its founder Nikolay Evdokimov.

Documents filed with the Central District Court of California on January. 9 order the defendants to pay over $sixteen million in disgorgement to the bureau within 14 days of the judgement's entry.

In a complaint filed on Sept. 18, 2022, the SEC had sued ICOBox and Evdokimov for operating an unregistered securities offering of roughly $14.half-dozen million worth of digital avails in 2022, and operating as an unregistered securities banker.

According to yesterday's proposed judgment, the SEC'south disgorgement penalty is calculated on the basis of $14.6 million in the business firm's sick-gotten gains plus prejudgement interest of simply over $ane.iv one thousand thousand. Evdokimov is personally ordered to pay a civil penalty of $189,426.

The SEC'south complaint against ICOBox

The SEC'south complaint in September alleged that ICOBox and Evdokimov facilitated the token sales of over thirty clients, who collectively raised over $650 million from investors. For its own operations, ICOBox purportedly raised $14.6 million in its own "ICOS" tokens from over 2,000 investors in the U.Southward. and worldwide.

ICOBox ostensibly did so in total cognition of the SEC's classification of sure digital tokens as securities offerings in the bureau'due south DAO Report of July 2022, having publicly discussed the report'southward significance in an interview with Reuters as well as communications with investors.

ICOBox and its founder nonetheless failed to register their token sale platform or qualify its operations for any exemption from registration, instead attempting to claim that ICOS tokens were not securities or that they warranted an exemption due to "an unspecified utility."

At the time of the September complaint, ICOBox's operations were ostensibly still ongoing and the firm had expanded the telescopic of its services to support security token sales (STOs), thereby continuing to flout registration requirements under federal securities laws.

The bureau in 2022

Earlier this calendar week, the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, identified new fiscal technologies including digital avails among its major concerns in the coming financial year.

In an interview Cointelegraph in December. 2022, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce — a.ka. "Crypto mom" — advocated for a more than flexible regulatory approach to crypto offerings, proposing that:

"The biggest thing the crypto community needs is a manner to become from a securities offering to a utility token offering that is not covered past securities laws, or is not covered by the full panoply of the securities laws."