In a move surprising no one the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the founder of McAfee, an international computer security company, for promoting ICOs without disclosing this to SEC. John McAfee has allegedly received 23 million dollars as an unofficial payment for endorsing 7 unlicensed ICOs.
He was in contact with the people behind the ICOs because they wished him to promoted those ICOs on his social media.
He did not, however, disclose to the regulator that he kept close to half the payment money granted to him by ICOs in direct violation to SEC guidelines. SEC went out to remind that if one fails to disclose that their endorsements are paid they are directly violating SEC standards. Celebrities and VIPs are not allowed to use their social media accounts to promote securities without revealing what compensations they received in return for doing that.
SEC issued a statement:
“From at least November 2017 through February 2018, McAfee leveraged his fame to make more than $23.1 million U.S. Dollars (‘USD’) in undisclosed compensation by recommending at least seven ‘initial coin offerings’ or ICOs to his Twitter followers. The ICOs at issue involved the offer and sale of digital asset securities and McAfee’s recommendations were materially false and misleading for several reasons”
That certainly explains some of his strange and, dare I say, bombastic statements about cryptos over the years.