Two individuals and a company have been charged with operating an illegal community pool and fraudulently soliciting $44 million via an “income fund investing in digital assets.”
The defendants are Sam Ikkurty, Ravishankar Avadhanam, and Jafia LLC, with a status hearing scheduled for May 25, 2022.
The three funds in question are Rose City Income Fund, Rose City Income Fund II LP, and Seneca Ventures LLC, with all assets being frozen by order of the District Court on May 11, 2022. According to information released by the CFTC,
“the CFTC seeks restitution to defrauded investors, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations.”
The complaint claims that the defendants used websites and YouTube videos to “solicit more than $44 million from at least 170 participants to purchase, hold and trade digital assets, commodities, derivatives, swaps and commodity futures contracts.”
It is alleged that instead of investing the funds in order generate a passive income through staking or well-managed trading that the defendants simply reallocated funds to other users in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme.
Further, it is alleged that the “defendants also transferred millions of dollars to an off-shore entity that, in turn, may have transferred funds to a foreign cryptocurrency exchange” for a total of $18 million.
The…
