The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is taking legal action against Green United, declaring that the Utah-based company has infringed federal securities laws by marketing $18 million worth of counterfeit crypto mining hardware.
Green United Openly Misled Its Investors
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a case against Green United and its two operators, 46-year-old Utah resident Wright Thurston and 43-year-old Kristoffer Krohn. They were accused of deceiving investors into purchasing $3,000 worth of “Green Boxes” for crypto mining on the Green Blockchain with false claims about potential returns.
According to reports, investors were promised an impressive 40-50% monthly return on the GREEN tokens mined by a “public global decentralized power grid” while they held complete control of their “Green Boxes” hosted at a Green United-controlled data center. The tokens generated from these machines would then be distributed among them.
The SEC has uncovered that Green United’s crypto mining machines never mined GREEN. This is because GREEN was not a mineable crypto asset, and the promised blockchain also did not exist. Thurston decided to take matters into his own hands and created the tokens himself on Ethereum instead in October 2018 – long after he began selling miners to investors in April of the same year.
Furthermore, the SEC has stated that unlike what Krohn told Green United’s investors, GREEN tokens never increased in value. It was not tradable on a secondary market until the fall of 2020 – and currently is selling for only $0.004, which stands far from its promised original price of two cents per token.
Users Didn’t Even Get the Bitcoins They Mined
With its deceptive intentions, Green United’s plan was to con investors into purchasing S9 Antminers as “Green Boxes.” The purchasable boxes were used for bitcoin mining, and the resulting bitcoins never reached their rightful owners. To combat this illegal practice, the SEC is striving to enforce permanent injunctions upon Green United, Thurston, and Krohn in addition to the displacement of any acquired funds or profits from these illicit activities with civil penalties issued.
This is not the first time Krohn has had issues with the SEC. In 2012, he was promoting a real estate investment program and made several misrepresentations to potential investors, violating federal securities laws. The SEC obtained injunctive relief against him as a result.
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