SEC v. Arbitrade Ltd., et al. (pump and dump, 2022)

Alleged — pending

These are allegations. SEC has filed an action; nothing in it has been proven, and the respondents have not been found liable. Everything described on this page is what the regulator alleges, not what a court has found. See our editorial policy.

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 2, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In September 2022 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Arbitrade Ltd., Cryptobontix Inc. and their principals Troy Hogg, James Goldberg and Stephen Braverman, plus Max Barber, over an alleged pump-and-dump of the crypto asset Dignity (DIG), with SION Trading FZE named as a relief defendant. The SEC alleges false claims that $10 billion in gold backed the token and that at least $36.8 million of DIG was sold at inflated prices. The matter is an allegation.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

the Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on September 30, 2022 as release LR-25537. The respondents named are Arbitrade Ltd., Cryptobontix Inc., Troy R. J. Hogg, James L. Goldberg, Stephen L. Braverman, Max W. Barber and SION Trading FZE (4 individuals, 3 entities).

The complaint alleges that between May 2018 and January 2019 the defendants announced a sham $10 billion gold acquisition and an audit of it to boost demand for DIG tokens, then sold at least $36.8 million of the token at the inflated prices. The charges are under the antifraud and registration provisions. This library tags the matter as pump and dump.

The conduct is recorded against crypto.

Non-monetary relief recorded: officer-and-director bar.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Pump and dump — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-09-30 Litigation release published

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. If this matter has since resolved, been withdrawn or been dismissed, we want to know: submit a correction.