Monday’s false business registration for a BlackRock XRP trust, which briefly boosted the token’s price by as much as 10%, has garnered the attention of regulators.
The Delaware Department of State referred the matter to the Delaware Department of Justice, a spokesperson told Blockworks Tuesday.
The registration, which crypto fans noticed Monday afternoon, mirrored past legitimate registrations from asset manager BlackRock, which is currently vying for the US Securities and Exchange Commission to approve its bitcoin and ether products. The falsified registration listed BlackRock Advisors and Daniel Schweiger as registered agents.
A Bloomberg ETF analyst on Monday confirmed via X the filing was fraudulent, citing a spokesperson from BlackRock.
This is false! Confirmed by BlackRock by me. Some whacko must have added using BlackRock executive name etc. Cmon man. pic.twitter.com/cDpnycYwjQ
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) November 13, 2023
Should the Delaware DOJ pursue charges, it would not be the first time the agency has targeted crypto-related schemes.
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In September, the state issued a cease and desist order to OKX.com and three other respondents for allegedly facilitating a long-term fraud scheme.
According to the order, a senior citizen lost $275,000 in retirement funds after being groomed to make cryptocurrency investments on bybit.us, an imposter of exchange ByBit.com. The funds now reside in wallets on the OKX exchange, the Delaware DOJ alleged.
“The use of crypto to commit fraud, while increasingly common, presents new challenges for law enforcement,” Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, said when the order was released. Today’s order takes a first step toward protecting Delaware investors from the pig butchering scam by freezing funds belonging to the victim.”
