SEC Bags $5.4M From NanoBit WhatsApp Crypto Scam, Court Records Show

A US federal court has entered a final judgment ordering NanoBit Limited and three affiliates to pay roughly $5.4 million in combined penalties, disgorgement and prejudgment interest, ending the SEC's fraud case against the crypto platform nearly two years after it was filed. The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York issued the ruling on June 16, finding that the defendants had violated US securities laws and imposing permanent injunctions barring them from issuing, purchasing or selling securities. The SEC announced the outcome on Monday.

According to the regulator, NanoBit's operators impersonated financial professionals in WhatsApp groups to lure at least 18 investors into depositing funds on the platform between 2023 and 2024. Investors were initially solicited on Instagram and other social media before being moved into the messaging groups, where a fake dashboard depicted rising returns to create the illusion of profitable trading. The SEC alleged the scheme promoted fictitious initial coin offerings and falsely claimed affiliate NanobitUS Securities was an SEC-registered broker.

"No transactions took place on the NanoBit platform and investors' funds in fact went to scheme participants who wired more than $2 million to bank accounts in Hong Kong and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of investors' crypto assets," the SEC said in its September 2024 complaint.

NanoBit itself was ordered to pay a $1.18 million fine, disgorgement of more than $532,000 and prejudgment interest of nearly $81,200, totaling nearly $1.8 million. Affiliates Radiant Horizons, Sweet Karma and Zhao Deli were each ordered to pay a $1.18 million fine, while Jiajie Liu, described by the SEC as one of the scheme's main orchestrators, was ordered to pay about $120,000 in penalties, disgorgement and prejudgment interest.

The case is part of the SEC's continued enforcement push against crypto-themed fraud, even as the agency has softened its regulatory posture toward digital asset companies and revised its framework for determining what constitutes a securities offering. On May 29, the SEC charged a Texas man with allegedly running a separate fraud that raised more than $12 million from roughly 150 investors by claiming to use AI-powered trading bots for guaranteed returns, and in April it charged Donald Basile and two entities he controlled with raising about $16 million through false claims tied to the Bitcoin Latinum token.