SEC sues Unicoin over alleged $100 million crypto offering fraud

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Unicoin Inc. and several senior figures on May 20, 2025, alleging that a crypto fundraising campaign collected more than $100 million through false or misleading claims about future tokens, their purported asset backing and the company’s sales.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the complaint named Unicoin; chief executive and board chairman Alexander Konanykhin; former president and current director Maria Silvina Moschini; former chief investment officer Alejandro Dominguez; and general counsel Richard Devlin. The case was a civil enforcement action, and its allegations had not been adjudicated on May 20, 2025.

The filing mattered beyond one issuer. It drew a line between unsettled legal questions about crypto-asset classification and more conventional allegations that investors had received materially inaccurate information. The SEC’s case focused on what Unicoin and its executives allegedly said about registration, fundraising and real-world assets—not on secondary-market trading in an already circulating token.

Certificates for tokens not yet distributed

According to the complaint, from February 2022 through May 20, 2025, more than 5,000 investors in the United States and abroad purchased “Unicoin Rights Certificates.” Those instruments purportedly entitled buyers to receive Unicoin tokens if and when the company minted and distributed them. The SEC said Unicoin had not publicly distributed the tokens by the filing date and had instead offered the certificates as securities.

The regulator alleged that Unicoin marketed the certificates through television, social media, investor communications and prominent advertising placements, including airports and thousands of New York City taxis. Investors paid with fiat currency and crypto assets, according to the complaint.

One central allegation concerned registration. Promotional statements allegedly described the certificates or future tokens as “SEC-registered,” “U.S.-registered” or compliant with SEC requirements. The complaint said neither the tokens nor the certificate offering had been registered with the SEC. It separately noted that Unicoin’s common stock was registered under Section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act, but was not publicly traded. Corporate reporting status, therefore, did not establish that the token certificates themselves were registered.

Asset and sales claims challenged

The SEC also alleged that Unicoin portrayed the future tokens as backed by billions of dollars in real estate and interests in pre-IPO companies. For four property transactions announced between September 2023 and January 2024—in Argentina, Thailand, Antigua and the Bahamas—the company allegedly cited appraised values exceeding $1.4 billion. The complaint asserted that most transactions never closed and that the properties’ combined value was no more than $300 million.

Fundraising claims formed another part of the case. Unicoin and its promoters allegedly announced progressively larger sales milestones, culminating in claims exceeding $3 billion by June 2024. The SEC alleged that actual proceeds from certificate sales during the February 2022-to-May 20, 2025 period were no more than $110 million. Both figures describe the regulator’s allegations, not judicial findings.

The complaint charged Unicoin, Konanykhin, Moschini and Dominguez under federal antifraud provisions. It also accused Unicoin and Konanykhin of registration violations and sought injunctions, disgorgement, interest, civil penalties and officer-and-director bars. Devlin was charged with negligently making similar misstatements in private-placement documents; the SEC announced that he had consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to proposed injunctive relief and a $37,500 civil penalty.

What remained unresolved

As of May 20, 2025, the court had not determined whether the SEC’s allegations were true, how much money might ultimately be subject to disgorgement, or whether the requested bars and penalties would be imposed. The event-day significance was the filing itself: a substantial crypto fundraising operation now faced a federal fraud case built around specific representations about assets, registration and investor demand.