Ultra Mining, however, refused to provide any information that verifies the donation or disclose its principals or financials, according to the order. Neither Ultra Mining or its promoter are registered to sell securities in Texas, are also failing to disclose the principals or financials of its cryptocurrency mining operation.
“By deploying various open source intelligence technologies, electronic collaboration tools as well as novel web crawling and scraping approaches, we have been able to provide intelligence and resources to investigators to help them conduct online investigations, as well as share and aggregate information about this international enforcement initiative,” said Jake van der Laan, Director of Information Technology & Regulatory Informatics, with the New Brunswick Financial & Consumer Services Commission and chair of NASAA’s Enforcement Technology Project Group.
Other NASAA task force enforcement investigations include:
- A promoter who targeted retirees and investors in need supplemental income “due to crash in the economy,” and touted his ability to capitalize on volatility in the markets to make lucrative guaranteed returns.
- An advertisement posted on Craigslist that encourages prospective clients to “exploit the current coronavirus crises by trading penny stocks from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry whose stocks are experiencing significant price fluctuations due to the pandemic.”
The NASAA task force is also working with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which on June 11 obtained an asset freeze against five individuals and six offshore entities for an alleged scheme that generated more than $25 million from unsuspecting investors nationwide who were victimized by illegal sales of multiple microcap companies, including four companies that are the subject of SEC trading suspensions.
To capitalize on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian citizens alleged in promotions that Sandy Steele Unlimited Inc, could produce medical quality facemasks and that WOD Retail Solutions, Inc. had automated kiosks for retailers to use in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both companies are under SEC trading suspensions.