HoweyCoins website has the ads “Token sale”, “Investment Ladder” and even “White Paper?”. It advertises itself as “one of the largest cryptocurrency platforms ever built” and looks like a real, attractive ICO.
However, it's a fake site set up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“If you’ve ever been tempted to buy into a hot investment opportunity linked with luxury travel, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a deal for you. Check out the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy’s mock initial coin offering (ICO) website that touts an all too good to be true investment opportunity. But please don’t expect the SEC to fly you anywhere exotic—because the offer isn’t real,” the regulator wrote in a press release.
The SEC created its own scam ICO to warn investors against fraudulent cryptocurrencies.
Everybody who tries to buy coins will instead be redirected to an SEC page. It states, that the regulator “created the bogus HoweyCoins.com site as an educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud involving digital assets like cryptocurrencies and coin offerings.”
Earlier this month, at the FIA Law and Compliance conference, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) representatives spoke about close cooperation with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
By Ekaterina Ulyanova