The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a permanent injunction against Michael Ackerman, an Ohio resident, for running a fraudulent digital asset trading operation. Ackerman, who is now banned from trading in CFTC-regulated markets, is ordered to pay $27 million in compensation and a similar amount as a civil monetary penalty.The fraudulent scheme, which ran from August 2017 to December 2019, involved around 150 people and organizations who gave Ackerman at least $33 million, with less than $10 million actually used for trading. The CFTC Commissioner, Christy Goldsmith Romero, has emphasized the need for reducing Bitcoin anonymity to control risks associated with digital assets.In a related development, British hacker Joseph O’Connor, known as PlugwalkJoe, has been sentenced to five years in jail in the U.S. for a SIM swap attack in April 2019 that resulted in the theft of cryptocurrency valued at $794,000.
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