Quote
A former public schoolboy has been accused of being the mastermind of a multimillion-pound international cryptocurrency fraud, which netted him $30m and saw one investor commit suicide.
Daniel Harrison, who is the son of a senior City financier, is alleged to have lured American investors with an initial coin offering (ICO), used to fund the creation of a cryptocurrency.
Harrison, in his late 30s, according to US court papers, was the founder of Monkey Capital LLC, a Delaware company, and Monkey Capital Inc, a Singapore-based company, and used them for “fraudulent purposes”. The claims have been made in a civil class action filed in a Florida court. The filing comes amid increasing legal and regulatory concerns about the boom in crypto-currencies.
Harrison could not be reached for comment, but he has previously told the cryptocurrency website CoinDesk that the claims are “ridiculous”. He has yet to file a formal response.
The Monkey Capital class action alleges that investors ploughed more than $5m worth of bitcoins into the ICO in return for options called a coeval, which could in turn be exchanged for a crypto-currency called monkey coin.
The legal papers state that there are “at least hundreds if not thousands of putative class members”. One of the original plaintiffs, Jeffrey Heberling, recently committed suicide.
A trial date has been set for September 17.
Investors were told that these coins would “derive their value from the usefulness and popularity of the Monday Capital Market — a development and launch of which was entirely in defendants’ control”.
However, the ICO, which was scheduled for July 2017 according to the court papers, never took place and the six plaintiffs never got back their bitcoins. The coins are now valued at more than $15m (£11m).
The class action states: “800,000,000 of the Monkey Coins were issued to Daniel Harrison, who quickly converted them to other cryptocurrency and fiat currency . . . presently valued at $30m.”
Harrison, who is thought to live in Singapore, says he went to Lancing College and Oxford University.
His father, Mark Harrison, who was a senior figure at Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, said: “I don’t wish to comment.”
Daniel Harrison, who is the son of a senior City financier, is alleged to have lured American investors with an initial coin offering (ICO), used to fund the creation of a cryptocurrency.
Harrison, in his late 30s, according to US court papers, was the founder of Monkey Capital LLC, a Delaware company, and Monkey Capital Inc, a Singapore-based company, and used them for “fraudulent purposes”. The claims have been made in a civil class action filed in a Florida court. The filing comes amid increasing legal and regulatory concerns about the boom in crypto-currencies.
Harrison could not be reached for comment, but he has previously told the cryptocurrency website CoinDesk that the claims are “ridiculous”. He has yet to file a formal response.
The Monkey Capital class action alleges that investors ploughed more than $5m worth of bitcoins into the ICO in return for options called a coeval, which could in turn be exchanged for a crypto-currency called monkey coin.
The legal papers state that there are “at least hundreds if not thousands of putative class members”. One of the original plaintiffs, Jeffrey Heberling, recently committed suicide.
A trial date has been set for September 17.
Investors were told that these coins would “derive their value from the usefulness and popularity of the Monday Capital Market — a development and launch of which was entirely in defendants’ control”.
However, the ICO, which was scheduled for July 2017 according to the court papers, never took place and the six plaintiffs never got back their bitcoins. The coins are now valued at more than $15m (£11m).
The class action states: “800,000,000 of the Monkey Coins were issued to Daniel Harrison, who quickly converted them to other cryptocurrency and fiat currency . . . presently valued at $30m.”
Harrison, who is thought to live in Singapore, says he went to Lancing College and Oxford University.
His father, Mark Harrison, who was a senior figure at Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, said: “I don’t wish to comment.”
