Member of the US Congress fined for advertising cryptocurrencies

The House Ethics Committee has penalized a US Republican congressman for advertising the Let’s Go Brandon (LETSGO) cryptocurrency. According to the report, Madison Cawthorne improperly promoted the LETSGO meme-coin for personal gain. The Committee’s investigation into the congressman was initiated at the request of Republican Thomas Tillis, who accused his colleague of insider trading.

After making an unreported $ 150,000 purchase of LETSGO in December 2021, Cawthorne wrote promotional comments on his own social media profiles. The Committee claims that the congressman managed to make a deal using LETSGO tokens on more favorable terms than those available to other participants in meme cryptocurrency trading. Thus, an unknown user received $ 150,000 from Cawthorne for 180 billion LETSGO.

According to the report of the House of Representatives Committee, the parliamentarian currently owns 15.3 billion LETSGO. «As a member of the House of Representatives, Cawthorne must protect the integrity of Congress. His involvement in the promotion of cryptocurrencies is inconsistent with this duty,» the agency said in a documented statement.

It is known that after purchasing the tokens, Cawthorne sold almost all of them in three transactions, having suffered a loss of about $ 7,500 by the end of January 2022. Given that the politician himself lost money from his transactions, the Committee was unable to determine whether the congressman had financially benefited from the promotional activities. The Ethics Commission concluded that the politician’s refusal to report his token transactions was not intentional, as the regulatory requirement to disclose such information was introduced relatively recently. The committee decided that the congressman should pay a $ 1,000 fine for refusing to report his token purchases, as well as a $ 14,000 fine to be donated to charity.

Cawthorne was elected as the youngest member of the US Congress in the 2020 elections to the House of Representatives. During his term in office, the politician was involved in many public scandals — in his own podcast, he talked about how Washington politicians used drugs and organized orgies, although he later partially denied this himself. Airport security twice prevented Cawthorne from taking a loaded weapon on the plane. Cawthorne will leave the House of Representatives in January 2023, as he lost the primary in the last Senate elections.

We recently reported that the US and the EU will take up stricter regulation of cryptocurrency advertising — the control will mainly apply to offshore cryptocurrency companies operating in the jurisdiction of the eurozone, but not officially licensed to operate.