on the crypto
- Investors involved in the 2017 Paragon Coin token sale want their money back, but can't track down the celebrity couple behind the operation.
Class Action against Paragon
The Northern District of California decided in the ICO case against Paragon Coin, Inc. that token buyers attempting to sue the founders of the project can qualify as a class and pursue a collective case.
The lawsuit argues that the token sale was an illegal offering of securities and that buyers are entitled to a refund of their investment or compensatory damages.
The former defendant's attorney, attorney Howard Schiffman, declined to comment except to say that his law firm has not worked with or heard from the defendant in the past "years".
Paragon raised about $ 12 million during the token sale, according to filings filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The ICO project
The project appears to have been directed by Jessica VerSteeg, a former US beauty queen, and her husband, Russian entrepreneur Egor Lavrov.
But the defendants listed in the court documents also include rapper Jayceon Terrell Taylor, aka “The Game,” who promoted Paragon ICO on social media and technologists Eugene Bogorad, Alex Emelichev, Gareth Rhodes and Vadym Kurylovich.
"Paragon offers everything from a cryptocurrency (ParagonCoin, PRG) to a blockchain solution (ParagonChain) designed to accelerate and digitize the marijuana supply chain," Forbes reported in July 2018.
"Now, VerSteeg's latest venture is Paragon Space, the first cannabis co-working space in Los Angeles to open on September 1st." It is unclear whether any of the project's stated plans would have materialized had it not been for a lawsuit by the SEC in 2018.
One of Paragon's early contributors, who chose to remain anonymous, said he wasn't worried about future lawsuits because the team has already complied with the SEC by paying a fine.
It is unclear whether the full fee was paid because, in November 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Paragon team missed some of the fine deadlines.
Consequences
If the class action goes ahead, it is unclear how the courts will find VerSteeg and Lavrov. As for the other defendants who have not gone missing, Bogorad says they were hired and paid in fiat or bitcoin with the promise of future tokens, but were unable to run a business. He then added that he was simply helping Lavrov with marketing in launching his company.
Another team would later be hired to run the company after the sale, Bogorad said. At the conclusion of the sale, the group of technicians split, returning mainly to Eastern Europe.
None of the participants in the sale, neither sellers nor buyers, were able to say exactly how much was collected. Bogorad estimated it to be less than $ 15 million.
