MONTREAL — Quebec's securities regulator has filed civil charges against three residents over the illegal sale of virtual currency called PlexCoin.
L'Autorite des marches financiers says Dominic Lacroix, Sabrina Paradis-Royer and Yan Ouellet face seven charges.
Lacroix is charged with making distributions without a prospectus and making misrepresentations relating to transactions in securities in connection with the PlexCoin project. Paradis-Royer and Yan Ouellet are charged with making distributions without a prospectus for PlexCoin transactions.
The Financial Markets Administrative Tribunal issued freeze orders on the personal property, bank accounts and cybercurrencies held by Lacroix and Paradis-Royer following a request from the AMF between July 2017 and May 2018.
The AMF says the Tribunal will rule on the submitted evidence after pleas are entered by the defendants, who couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
The Quebec charges come about eight months after Lacroix and Paradis-Royer, owners of PlexCoin Initial Coin Offering, consented to an order by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York to pay nearly US$7 million.
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint filed Dec. 1, 2017, the pair fraudulently raised millions of dollars in unregistered sales of securities called PlexCoin "based on a series of false and misleading statements to potential and actual investors, including misrepresentations about the size and scale of PlexCorps' operations, the use of funds raised in the PlexCoin ICO, and the amount of funds raised in the PlexCoin ICO."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2020.
The Canadian Press
