I think the recent SEC fines you are talking about were for Erik T. Voorhees, who did a cryptostock IPO selling "shares" in SatoshiDice and FeedZeBirds sites. According to Wikipedia he is an American citizen and files American taxes, even though he lives outside of the USA, so that is why the SEC was able to have authority over him.
I can't remember where I read about it but it was an article from a reputable source and it stated specifically that anyone selling "securities" to anyone in the US (irrespective of where they were based themselves) had to register. Moolah.io have admitted that they should have gotten registered earlier and are now in the process of doing so - the guy that runs it said so himself.