SEC wins lawsuit against Rivetz Corp and its CEO for the sale of over $18 million in unregistered securities

Odaily Planet Daily News U.S. SEC wins lawsuit in IC0 case against Rivetz Corp and its CEO Steven Sprague. In an order on September 30, Massachusetts federal judge Mark Mastroianni agreed with the SEC that Sprague’s offering of Rivetz (RvT) Tokens to the American public based on Ethereum constituted charges of selling unregistered securities. The SEC sued the defunct blockchain hardware company and Sprague in September 2021, alleging that they sold Rivetz Tokens worth $18 million to over 7,200 investors in 2017, with one-third of the investors in the United States. SEC and Sprague did not raise objections to the important facts of the case, but Sprague (on its own behalf) claimed that the Token is a type of software product, rather than an investment contract under the security definition of Howey test as claimed by SEC. But the judge wrote, “From the first announcement of IC0 to completion, Rivetz and Sprague made statements to potential buyers, explicitly linking the value of RvT Token to Rivetz’s goal of creating a secure ecosystem for mobile devices.” (Cointelegraph)