The cryptocurrency whose value has fallen by 60% due to the actions of the US government has been named

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against SafeMoon’s DeFi project and three of its executives. The US Department of Justice also filed charges. Following the news, the SAFEMOON token dropped by 60%.

According to the SEC, the project founder Kyle Nagy, CEO John Caroni, and CTO Thomas Smith misappropriated $ 200 million in investor funds. According to the regulator, Nagy falsely assured investors that SAFEMOON would be locked in a liquidity pool, but this never happened.

«In marketing materials, in its technical description, and on its website, Nagy claimed that these stored assets would not be available for at least four years. Smith and Caroni repeated and disseminated these false statements in social media and other communications to the public,» the complaint says.

The prosecutor said that the defendants spent other people’s money on expensive cars, travel and luxury real estate.

The U.S. Department of Justice, for its part, accused the project managers of conspiracy to launder money. In addition, the regulator claims that they deliberately manipulated the market by introducing the SAFEMOON token in 2021 and making large transactions with it to maintain its value. In just a month, the value of the asset increased by 55,000%, and its capitalization exceeded $ 5 billion.

Following the charges, the police arrested John Caroni and Thomas Smith.

According to CoinGecko, the token is trading for $ 0.80, having dropped by 60% in a day. The market capitalization is $ 46 million, and the trading volume over the past 24 hours has barely exceeded $ 1.5 million.

It should be noted that in February 2022, the project was accused of implementing a pump-and-dump scheme using the native SAFEMOON token. The lawsuit claimed that SafeMoon and its subsidiaries misled investors by offering coins in exchange for huge profits.

And in March of this year, the project fell victim to a major hack. Analysts found out that a hacker gained access to the token’s liquidity pool through a leaked administrator key and stole approximately $ 8.9 million. A month later, the attacker agreed to return 80% of the stolen funds.