{"id":31981,"date":"2020-11-18T17:08:10","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T15:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=31981"},"modified":"2025-08-28T06:25:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T03:25:55","slug":"australian-regulator-charges-bitconnect-promoter-john-bigatton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/australian-regulator-charges-bitconnect-promoter-john-bigatton\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian regulator charges BitConnect promoter John Bigatton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) <a href=\"https:\/\/asic.gov.au\/about-asic\/news-centre\/find-a-media-release\/2020-releases\/20-288mr-former-bitconnect-promoter-john-bigatton-charged\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">has charged<\/a> John Bigatton, a New South Wales resident, with promoting the fraudulent cryptocurrency project BitConnect.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to ASIC, Bigatton promoted the company from August 2017 to January 2018. For operating an unregistered investment offering, he faces up to five years in prison and a fine of $42 000; for providing financial services without a licence \u2014 up to two years&#8217; imprisonment with a similar fine.<\/p>\n<p>He is also charged with four counts of disseminating statements that misled. The maximum penalty for each charge is ten years&#8217; imprisonment and a fine of $945 000. Earlier, the regulator barred him from providing financial services for seven years.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2018, BitConnect was accused of running a pyramid scheme. At the height of its popularity, the BitConnect coin price exceeded $500 and ranked in the top ten on CoinMarketCap.<\/p>\n<p>Investors were warned away from BitConnect by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, billionaire Mike Novogratz and Litecoin creator Charlie Lee.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"XoMESOkBMY\">\n<p>BitConnect: Why did the community revolt against the project<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"\u201cBitConnect: why did the community revolt against the project\u201d \u2014 ForkLog\" src=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/exclusive\/bitconnect-pochemu-soobshhestvo-vzbuntovalos-protiv-proekta\/embed#?secret=uf0eBGGPdf#?secret=XoMESOkBMY\" data-secret=\"XoMESOkBMY\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In August 2018, police arrested the head of the project&#8217;s Indian arm, Diyash Darji. A year later he was charged with organising another multi-million-dollar crypto pyramid scheme.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog&#8217;s Telegram news: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forkloglive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog FEED<\/a> \u2014 the full feed of news, <a href=\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has charged John Bigatton, a New South Wales resident, with promoting the fraudulent cryptocurrency project BitConnect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108,708,1154],"class_list":["post-31981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-australia","tag-bitconnect","tag-crimes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"27","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31983,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31981\/revisions\/31983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}