AMF demands that Dominique Lacroix return the funds received during the ICO

Dominique Lacroix, one of the founders of the fraudulent ICO Plexcoin, paid out more than $3 million in Bitcoin according to a ruling by the Quebec Financial Markets Authority (AMF). The regulation is one of several created by North American authorities to combat fraudulent ICOs and other illegal cryptocurrency-related activities.

Judge Raymond Pronovost gave Lacroix 24 hours to “surrender” all the bitcoins he had. Initially, Lacroix was called to stop the launch of the ICO in July 2017. But in August 2017, the initial coin offering went live and raised approximately $15 million. Such disobedience resulted in Lacroix going to jail for two months, and his company DL Innov now being ordered to pay a fine of $110,000.

PlexCoin came to the attention of the SEC in December 2017.

At that time, the commission took control of Lacroix's assets in an attempt to “stop a rapidly growing fraudulent ICO promising 13x returns within a month, and raising over $15 million.” In mid-June, the SEC officially received emergency court approval to freeze LaCroix's assets. 

In May, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) launched “Operation Cryptosweep”. In this operation,  regulators and law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada are working together to eliminate fraudulent ICOs. Recently, AMF took action against two other initial coin offerings: Antivolatility and ZZZ. The founders of both ICOs are officially ordered to appear before the AMF on August 10.

According to financemagnates.com