The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Nader Al-Naji, the founder of the crypto social media platform BitClout, with wire fraud and the sale of unregistered securities. He was arrested last Saturday and presented before a California judge on Monday.
The Controversial BitClout Platform
According to the announcement yesterday (Tuesday), Al-Naji, known by his pseudonym “Diamondhands,” raised more than $257 million from unregistered offers and sales of BTCLT, BitClout’s native token. He allegedly misappropriated $7 million of investor funds for personal expenditures, including rental payments for a Beverly Hills mansion and extravagant cash gifts to family members.
BitClout made waves following its launch in 2021 as an alternative to centralised social media platforms. The platform controversially added profiles of celebrities and people with large followings by copying their publicly available photos and data, mostly from X (formerly Twitter). At that time, Al-Naji received a cease-and-desist letter from law firm Anderson Kill, claiming that the project’s use of data without consent violated California’s laws.
The SEC’s announcement further alleged that Al-Naji portrayed BitClout as a decentralised project with “no company behind it” and launched it under a pseudonym to avoid regulations.
Today we charged Nader Al-Naji with perpetrating a multi-million-dollar fraudulent crypto asset scheme involving a social media platform called BitClout and its native token of the same name.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) July 30, 2024
Heavy Charges against the Founder
The SEC charged Al-Naji with violating the registration and anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC’s complaint also named Al-Naji’s family, including his wife and mother, as he transferred investor funds to them.
In parallel, the DoJ charged the BitClout founder with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
“As alleged in our complaint, Al-Naji attempted to evade the federal securities laws and defraud the investing public, mistakenly believing that ‘being “fake” decentralized generally confuses regulators and deters them from going after you,” said Gurbir Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.
“He is obviously wrong: as we have shown time and again, and as reflected in the…
