Celebrities Fined By SEC

Kim Kardashian

On October 3, 2022, the SEC announced the charges against Kim Kardashian. She posted a well-written promotional content to her 331 million Instagram followers for EMAX, but the inclusion of "Not Financial Advice" seemed inadequate. She eventually paid a fine of $1.26 million, disgorgement, and interest to settle the charges.

DJ Khaled

On November 29, 2018, the SEC announced charges against music producer Khaled Khaled for failing to disclose the compensation he received for promoting Centra Tech's ICO. This was the SEC's first enforcement action for promoting ICOs.

To settle the SEC's charges, DJ Khaled paid a total of $152,700 in penalties, disgorgement, and interest.

Floyd Mayweather

In 2018, boxing champion Floyd Mayweather received SEC charges for promoting Centra Tech's ICO for compensation. To settle the charges, Mayweather paid a total of $614,775 in penalties, disgorgement, and interest. However, Mayweather did not end his crypto career and was not fined alongside Pierce and Kardashian due to his past losses.

This time, it was EMAX that caught Mayweather's attention. Mayweather did not directly promote EMAX and avoided SEC's enforcement by being cautious and not promoting it like he did in the past. In June 2021, Mayweather had an exhibition boxing match with Logan Paul, wearing boxing shorts with EMAX printed on them. Tickets for the match could be purchased with EMAX, with front-row seats available exclusively for EMAX. Buyers of more than $5,000 worth of EMAX would also receive a pair of boxing gloves signed by Mayweather.

Shortly after the match, EMAX became worthless.

T.I.

In September 2020, the SEC charged rapper T.I. with offering and selling FLiK Tokens on his social media accounts, falsely claiming to be a co-owner of FLiK and leading his fans to participate in FLiK's ICO. The SEC demanded that T.I. pay a fine of $75,000 and be prohibited from participating in the issuance and sale in digital assets for five years.

Steven Seagal

In February 2020, the SEC announced charges against actor Steven Seagal for failing to disclose the compensation for his promoting the ICO of Bitcoiin 2 Gen (B2G).

The SEC's investigation found that Seagal did not disclose his receipt of $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of B2G Tokens as compensation for promoting the ICO. Seagal publicly promoted the ICO on his social media accounts, urging people not to miss out on the Bitcoiin 2 Gen ICO, and released a promotional article titled "Zen Master Steven Seagal Becomes Brand Ambassador for Bitcoiin 2 Gen."

Paul Pierce

On February 18th, NBA player Paul Pierce settled with the SEC over the case of selling cryptocurrency tokens. In order to settle the SEC's investigation into his token sales, Pierce paid a total of $1.409 million.

In its announcement of the charges against Pierce, the SEC stated that his specific charges were promoting and selling EMAX (EthereumMax) tokens on social media without disclosing the compensation he received for the endorsement, as well as making false and misleading promotional statements about EMAX.

The SEC investigation found that Pierce did not disclose to others that he had received over $244,000 worth of EMAX tokens as compensation for his Twitter endorsement. The investigators also found that Pierce made misleading statements about EMAX on Twitter, including posting a screenshot of an account showing a large number of holdings and profits, but not revealing that his own holdings were significantly lower than the amount shown in the screenshot. Additionally, Pierce included a direct link to the EthereumMax website in his tweet, which had instructions on how to purchase EMAX tokens.