John McAfee Sent To Court By SEC Over ICO Promotion

John McAfee is a character all his own, one you would be hard-pressed trying to find more than a handful of across the entire globe. On Monday, the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), had filed a lawsuit against McAfee. These charges were for the alleged promotion of an initial coin offering (ICO) without first disclosing that these ICO issuers were paying him, in turn.

A Man Of Many Offences

This stands in direct violation of the US laws regarding securities, and it seems McAfee stands as one of many celebrities that have gone out of their way to pull this tactic.

As the complaint stipulates, during the time frame of November of 2017 and February of 2018, McAfee had made use of his controversial fame in order to make an excess of $23.1 million. He gained this by way of undisclosed compensation by recommending a minimum of seven ICOs to his various Twitter followers.

The Charges At Hand

The SEC had mentioned seven ICO issuers, purposefully unidentified, that had privately consulted with McAfee and his team in order to have him publicly endorse their respective ICOs. In exchange, McAfee will be compensated by those coins themselves, as well as Bitcoin. While very much illegal, it seems that this is a new trend among relatively minor celebrities.

In the past, the SEC had butted heads with both Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled for the same act of promoting ICOs without disclosing their respective financial interests.

One of the more spectacular footnotes in McAfee’s very colorful history is that the man had made some downright ridiculous predictions about how the Bitcoin price would rise, predicting a $1 million price tag for Bitcoin by the end of 2019.

Obviously, that didn’t happen, but the man did a spectacular double-back on his statement, proclaiming it all just a ruse to onboard new people within Bitcoin. It wasn’t even a month after that statement, however, when the man did a complete 180, going from a Bitcoin-only advocate to an altcoin-only advocate, proudly proclaiming Bitcoin to be the “One True Shitcoin.”

This isn’t even mentioning his bid for the US presidency, albeit brief as it was.

Only Two Things Are Certain In This World…

Now, however, it seems that the man’s luck has run out. John McAfee has been arrested in Spain, awaiting extradition to the US. From there, the man will face charges from everything between fraud and tax evasion. The only saving grace is that McAfee seemed to not have dragged his cybersecurity company into the mess, as well. The brief the DoJ used to announce the arrest stated that there is no connection between the company and the individual.