The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged three purported crypto trading platforms and four affiliated investment clubs on Dec. 22, alleging a $14 million fake-trading scheme that ended with locked withdrawals for U.S. retail users. The agency outlined the case in a new press release and a detailed complaint filed in the District of Colorado.
Regulators targeted platforms Morocoin Tech Corp., Berge Blockchain Technology Co. Ltd., and Cirkor Inc., alongside investment clubs AI Wealth Inc., Lane Wealth Inc., AI Investment Education Foundation Ltd., and Zenith Asset Tech Foundation. The SEC said the group never ran genuine trading operations yet showed users fabricated profits and balances while routing deposits through layered bank accounts and crypto wallets.
WhatsApp “AI” clubs fed users into Morocoin, Berge and Cirkor
According to the complaint, the four “clubs” operated as WhatsApp groups from January 2024 through January 2025. Agents bought social media ads to push U.S. users into chats that posed as invite-only communities run by experienced financial professionals. Some ads featured deepfake videos of well known finance personalities to add credibility.
Inside the chats, a rotating cast of “professors” and “assistants” pushed what they branded as AI generated trading signals. They framed the clubs as education plus signals. In reality the flow pushed users toward opening accounts on Morocoin, Berge or Cirkor, whose web front ends closely mimicked a standard centralized exchange interface with real time prices and order histories.
The complaint says the platforms displayed simulated positions and PnL, but never executed real trades. The same playbook spanned all three sites, including identical marketing claims like being the “World’s First Stablecoin Trading Center” and shared educational content on crypto assets.
Fake STOs, zero trading and blocked withdrawals
Once users moved funds onto the sites, club operators and platform operators began pitching “Security Token Offerings” that they equated with IPO style listings. The SEC alleges that these STOs and their supposed issuers did not exist and that all references to regulatory approvals or government licenses, including FinCEN money services business registrations, were fabricated.
User dashboards showed allocations into these offerings and rising balances. Behind the scenes, defendants allegedly swept deposits into a network of domestic and overseas bank accounts and crypto wallets. The complaint says none of the assets entered real trading venues.
When users tried to cash out, the scheme shifted into an advance fee phase. According to the SEC, victims faced new “tax” or “verification” charges and threats that their accounts would remain frozen unless they wired fresh money. Even when investors paid, withdrawals still did not process.
“This matter highlights an all-too-common form of investment scam that is being used to target U.S. retail investors with devastating consequences,” said Laura D’Allaird, chief of the SEC’s Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit.
The complaint charges the three platform entities with violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5. The four club entities face antifraud counts under the same core provisions. The SEC is asking for permanent injunctions, civil penalties, and disgorgement with interest from Morocoin, Berge and Cirkor.
Repeat player AIIEF and a broader social-media fraud pattern
One of the defendants already sat on the SEC’s radar. AI Investment Education Foundation Ltd. was charged in November in a separate Colorado action for making false and unsubstantiated statements in its Form ADV as an exempt reporting adviser, alongside several other sham managers named in a litigation release. That earlier case ties into a parallel DOJ indictment of a Hong Kong businessman accused of orchestrating false adviser filings for a raft of shell entities.
The Dec. 22 filing slots into a growing SEC campaign against crypto themed social media fraud. In September 2024, the agency brought its first “relationship investment scam” cases around fake platforms NanoBit and CoinW6, where promoters courted victims on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Instagram before diverting deposits from non existent trading venues, according to a 2024 release.
That same playbook now appears in a refined version with AI branding, WhatsApp based clubs, deepfake marketing and simulated STO dashboards. The targets again are U.S. retail users who think they are using off exchange crypto venues rather than sending funds straight into a confidence scheme.
Signal for offshore “exchanges” and Telegram style trading groups
For legitimate platforms and token teams, the case reinforces two themes in current SEC enforcement. First, the agency treats fake or simulated trading as straight securities fraud regardless of whether the venue calls itself an “exchange” or a club. Second, regulators now treat WhatsApp and similar channels as core distribution rails for investment offerings, not side chatter.
That trajectory already shows up in the SEC’s October 2024 action against three so called market makers and nine individuals for wash trading and price manipulation across multiple crypto assets, detailed in release 2024-166. In that case the agency focused on algorithmic volume inflation on existing venues. In the Morocoin and Berge matter, the entire venue itself is alleged to be fiction.
The Commission’s complaint says the seven defendants together diverted at least $14 million from U.S. investors between January 2024 and January 2025 and routed the money through a web of bank and wallet infrastructure. The civil case now moves to federal court in Colorado, where the SEC will push for permanent bars and money judgments while victims wait to see how much can be clawed back.
