US Charges 18 in Crypto Market Manipulation Scheme

The proactive attitude of the U.S. regulators has helped hundreds of victims recover their lost funds, including dismantling fraudulent schemes. 

On October 09, 2024, an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts read that 18 individuals and entities have been charged over fraud and manipulation in the cryptocurrency market. 

Of the charges, 4 pleaded guilty, another had to plead guilty, including apprehended 3 others. It is argued that some leading personalities of crypto companies and several market markers engaged in deceptive practices to temper the price. 

The press release quotes, “More than $25 million in cryptocurrency has been seized, and multiple trading bots responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of wash trades for approximately 60 different cryptocurrencies have been deactivated.”

Defendants who founded crypto-based companies made misleading statements about their cryptocurrencies (“tokens”) and executed sham trades in those tokens (“wash trades”) to create the appearance of trading activity that would make the tokens look like good/legitimate investments, as per the release.  

In an archive interview, Mkay said, “I want the SaitaChain Coin to be the new currency when people shop for groceries or buy movie tickets. The ATMs, the bank lines, the check deposits must be a thing of the past.”

The identified Tactic Leveraged to Commit Fraud  

The tactics leveraged by the charged defendants included wash trading, manipulating price pump dumps, and others. They also inflated the prices, gaining huge prices by dumping tokens when trading high. 

The office identified Saitama as one of the major companies behind the identified fraud; as per CoinMarketCap, the company was founded by Manpreet Kohli, who was also the CEO of the firm and was detained officially in the United Kingdom on October 07, 2024.

SaitaChain Coin (STC) Price Uncovered 

SaitaChain Coin (STC) listed on CoinMarketCap has 44,940,249,168 STC, of which 43,401,103,627 STC are in circulation as of this writing. At the same time, STC was trading at $0.0001996, losing 97.30% since its debut in the market. 

STC’s all-time highest trading price is $0.007825, recorded on June 09, 2022 after continuing to pump, it fell to its lowest trading mark of $0.0001577 on October 10, 2024. 

As per BscScan, STC has 144,889 holders with an onchain market capitalization of $208,520,000.00. It seems like several whales have been withdrawing their funds before after the allegations of the arrest of Manpreet, as available information has been the founding members of both SaitaChain and Saitama.  

 Despite these severe allegations, X post from the verified profile of Saita Chain notes that “Business operations at SaitaChain LTD will continue as usual, without any disruption.” 

“We are aware of the allegations currently circulating. We will address these matters as soon as we have further information.” The X account has 384k followers, with 82.02k members following their page on Facebook, and it has 6.33k followers on Telegram.