By
Bena Ilyas
April 25th, 2024
Bitcoin futures company is said to reopen withdrawals after being accused of having violated a number of U.S. securities laws.
As it was previously reported by CoinSpeaker, Bitcoin futures firm 1Broker, its parent company 1Pool and its CEO Patrick Brunner faced severe charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The company is registered on the Marshall Islands and the main aim of its 1Broker.com website is to provide investors with an opportunity to take part in the real-world market with investment tools as, for example, commodity, stock, and index markets, directly utilizing their Bitcoins without a necessity to convert them to fiat money.
Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning that the platform used to omit such important procedures as KYC/AML checks before allowing investors to get access to the market.
In late September, the platform was accused by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of acting as an unregistered security-based swaps dealer and of having broken money laundering and wire fraud laws.
Moreover, its website was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI accused 1Broker of having ignored the existing KYC policy. The agency was able to prove its suspicions rather easily.
The FBI undercover special agent just tried to become an investor, as a result it was seen that the platform didn’t carry out any necessary checks to prove the identity of its users. As it was said in the report, to create their accounts on the platform, investors just needed to provide an email address and a user name, no other additional information was required.
At the current moment, the SEC, the CFTC and the FBI are seeking to impose monetary penalties on the company and its CEO.
Quite quickly, in early October, the platform managed to get a permission to reopen its web site, nevertheless, just a read-only version has become available. But still it was better than nothing, especially for investors who wanted to be sure that their funds were safe.
At the same time, 1Broker informed the community that they were establishing cooperation with the US-based counsel, who would represent the firm in the ongoing SEC and CFTC case. The name of the lawyer wasn’t mentioned.
Just recently, the company has delivered a new portion of news. Now it is ready to reopen withdrawals. The company wrote on its Twitter account:
We will start processing withdrawals tomorrow at 12:00 (UTC). Thanks for your patience in the past days!
— 1Broker (@1Brokerio) October 10, 2018
However, there is still no information on any kind of reactivation of the company’s trading platform. It is rather obvious that 1Broker is experiencing not the best period in its history.
As it has violated the Securities Law, for it there are practically no chances to win the case, that’s why it is really good for investors that they can get their funds back now.