ICOBox fails to reply to SEC’s motion for default judgment
The deadline to file any opposition or other response to the SEC’s motion for default judgment was January 21, 2020.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is beefing up its case against ICOBox and Nikolay Evdokimov. Shortly after the Commission filed its motion for default judgment against the defendants, it reinforced the motion through a supplemental declaration.
The document, submitted at the California Central District Court and seen by FinanceFeeds, informs the Court that the defendants have failed to reply to the SEC’s motion within the timeframe set by the Court.
The SEC on January 9, 2020, provided the default judgment motion papers by email to the defendants at the last known email address for Evdokimov, [email protected], with a request for a receipt of delivery. In response to the SEC’s email, the SEC received a notification that the email had been relayed, and the email did not bounce back. The SEC did not receive any response to its email from the defendants.
The defendants’ deadline to file any opposition or other response to the SEC’s motion for default judgment was January 21, 2020. They have not filed nor served on the SEC any opposition or other response to the motion (nor any answer to the complaint).
Let’s recall that ICOBox, a company claiming to be “Blockchain Growth Promoter and Business Facilitator for companies seeking to sell their products via ICO crowdsales”, and its founder Nikolay Evdokimov are accused of conducting an illegal $14 million securities offering of ICOBox’s digital tokens and of acting as unregistered brokers for other digital asset offerings.
According to the proposed default judgment, ICOBox and Evdokimov are jointly and severally liable for disgorgement of $14,600,000, representing ill-gotten gains obtained as a result of the conduct alleged in the SEC’s Complaint, plus prejudgment interest thereon in the amount of $1,459,428.99, for a total of $16,059,429.99. The defendants will have to pay $16,059,429.99 to the SEC within 14 days after entry of the judgment.
Evdokimov is ordered to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $189,426.
According to the SEC’s complaint, ICOBox raised funds in 2017 to develop a platform for initial coin offerings by selling, in an unregistered offering, roughly $14.6 million of “ICOS” tokens to over 2,000 investors.
The regulator alleges that by not registering the ICOS offering, the company deprived investors of meaningful information that would be found in a registration statement that investors could use to assess the company’s prospects. By actively soliciting and attracting investors to ICOBox’s clients’ securities offerings in exchange for transaction-based compensation without registering as or associating with a registered broker-dealer, the defendants are alleged to have engaged in unregistered broker activities that violated the federal securities laws.
