The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sued crypto executive Donald Basile, alleging he and two companies he controlled raised about $16 million from investors by falsely promoting an “insured,” asset-backed token called Bitcoin Latinum.
Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the SEC’s complaint says Basile ran the scheme from March through December 2021 via Monsoon Blockchain Corp. and GIBF GP Inc. Investors were offered Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) promising future delivery of Bitcoin Latinum. The SEC alleges Basile repeatedly told hundreds of investors the token was backed and insured, but that no insurance company provided coverage or evidence to support those claims.
Instead of using investor funds to support the token’s value, the complaint alleges millions were diverted to Basile’s personal spending, including real estate purchases, credit card payments and the purchase of a $160,000 horse. The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains with interest, civil penalties, a ban on Basile’s participation in securities offerings and an officer-and-director bar preventing him from leading public companies. The Bitcoin Latinum website currently returns a 404 error.
The case is one of the relatively few SEC enforcement actions reported during the Trump administration era, which had signaled a more crypto-friendly regulatory stance compared with earlier periods.
Separately, the SEC has criticized its past crypto enforcement strategy for focusing on case volume rather than demonstrable investor benefit. The agency said many prior actions did not directly benefit investors and reflected a misallocation of enforcement resources. Since fiscal 2022, the SEC reports it has brought 95 actions and collected $2.3 billion in penalties tied to “book-and-record” violations, while noting some cases involving crypto registration and dealer definitions did not identify clear investor harm.
Under Chair Paul Atkins, appointed in 2025, the SEC says it has shifted away from “regulation by enforcement” and is prioritizing cases that address fraud, market manipulation and serious abuses of trust. Cointelegraph notes the report in line with its commitment to independent, transparent journalism and encourages readers to verify information independently. Read the Editorial Policy at https://cointelegraph.com/editorial-policy