United States of America: Announced complaint against Vista Network Technologies and CEO Armen Temurian for alleged digital asset commodities fraud

On 16 February 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a complaint against Vista Network Technologies and its CEO Armen Temurian with the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York for fraudulent solicitation and misappropriation of customers' digital assets commodities. The complaint alleges that between September 2017 and January 2018, the defendants fraudulently solicited over USD 7 million worth of bitcoin and ether from customers by falsely advertising that Vista would trade their digital assets and earn a 2.5% daily return or "double in just 80 days." The complaint alleges the defendants' representations were false because the defendants had never traded customer assets and did not have any trading program capable of generating the promised returns. Furthermore, the defendants allegedly engaged in a Ponzi-like scheme by using new investors' assets to pay returns to investors who had invested earlier in the scheme.