The United States Federal Trade Commission said it has opened an investigation into crypto-lending company Voyager Digital in parallel with the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.
In a Feb. 22 filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the FTC he said investigated Voyager and its employees “for their deceptive and unfair marketing of cryptocurrency to the public.” The announcement followed Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles initial plan approval in which Voyager’s debtors would sell the firm’s assets to Binance.US for more than $1 billion.
According to the FTC’s filing — an objection to the debtors’ plan — the commission argued that some of the parties involved in Voyager’s bankruptcy proceedings should not be exempt from certain financial claims, “including debts for ‘false statements’ and ‘false pretenses'” :
“By not excluding, among other things, false pretenses and misrepresentations, the statement can be read to interfere with the causes of action of a government entity such as the FTC. This is unacceptable […] The FTC politely requests that the Court decline to confirm the Debtors’ proposed plan.”
New @FTC analysis shows that cryptocurrency scams are on the rise, with about 1 in 4 reported dollars lost to crypto-paid scams.
Since the beginning of 2021, consumers have reported losing more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency due to fraud.https://t.co/AnWqzj93jK
— Lina Khan (@linakhanFTC) June 3, 2022
Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States in July 2022 ahead of similar filings from Celsius Network, FTX and BlockFi. Under one of the firm’s proposed restructuring plans, Binance.US would acquire Voyager’s assets, but the US Securities and Exchange Commission protested the moveciting a lack of “necessary information”.
Related: Voyager’s creditors issue subpoena to SBF to appear for ‘remote storage’
Bankruptcy proceedings are also ongoing for Celsius and FTX, with respective CEOs Alex Mashinsky and Sam Bankman-Fried faces scrutiny from US authorities for their alleged actions before the companies filed for Chapter 11. Under Celsius’ proposed restructuring plan, more than 85% of users he is expected to recover roughly 70% of their funds.
