Hollywood martial arts sensei Steven Seagal was recently karate-chopped by the SEC for his alleged undisclosed payments for Twitter-touting a security that was being offered and sold in an initial coin offering. In a settled cease-and-desist order, the Moscow-based B movie actor consented to a violation of Section 17(b) of the Securities Act of 1933, which prohibits the promotion of a security without fully disclosing the receipt and amount of compensation for such promotion. The SEC found that that Seagal was kung fu fighting on behalf of something called Bitcoiin2Gen in the promotion of investment contracts to be issued on the Ethereum blockchain. The operator of the dojo with no mojo agreed to repay $314,000 to settle the charges involved in the practice commonly known as scalping.
