Sorry but the last thing this community needs is more people making shit up. Do the right thing and delete this post before people start thinking it's real...
Brasília, Dec. 2, 2015 — The Securities and Exchange Comission today
charged the Bitcoin mining company Scrypt.CC and its founder MARCELO SANTOS
with conducting a Ponzi scheme that used the lure of quick riches from virtual currency
to defraud investors.
According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Connectcut, “mining” for Bitcoin or other virtual currencies means applying computer power to try to solve complex equations that verify a group of transactions in that virtual currency. The first computer or collection of computers to solve an equation is awarded new units of that virtual currency.
The SEC alleges that MARCELO SANTOS perpetrated the fraud through his brazilian company Scrypt.CC by purporting to offer shares of a digital Bitcoin mining operation. In reality, Scrypt.CC did not own enough computing power for the mining it promised to conduct, so most investors paid for a share of computing power that never existed. Returns paid to some investors came from proceeds generated from sales to other investors.
As alleged in our complaint, MARCELO SANTOS and his company cloaked their scheme in technological sophistication and jargon, but the fraud was simple at its core: they sold what they did not own, misrepresented what they were selling, and robbed one investor to pay another.
According to the SEC’s complaint:
From January 2014 to December 2015, MARCELO SANTOS and his company sold $20 million worth of purported shares in a digital mining contract they called a KHS.
More than 10,000 investors purchased KHS, which were touted as always profitable and never obsolete.
Although KHS were depicted in Scrypt.CC marketing materials as a physical product or piece of mining hardware, the promised contract purportedly entitled the investor to control a share of computing power that Scrypt.CC claimed to own and operate.
Investors were misled to believe they would share in returns earned by the Bitcoin mining activities when in reality Scrypt.CC directed little or no computing power toward any mining activity.
Because MARCELO SANTOS and his company sold far more computing power than they owned, they owed investors a daily return that was larger than any actual return they were making on their limited mining operations.
Therefore, investors were simply paid back gradually over time under the mantra of “returns” out of funds that MARCELO SANTOS and his company collected from other investors.
Most KHS investors never recovered the full amount of their investments, and few made a profit.
The SEC’s complaint seeks permanent injunctive relief as well as the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest and penalties.