Summary
âž¡ The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated Veritasium and its lead, Reginald Middleton, for allegedly offering unregistered digital asset securities. Despite Middleton’s full cooperation, the SEC froze all his and the company’s assets after two years of investigation. This action has significantly impacted the company’s operations and Middleton’s ability to defend himself. The case also involves a dispute over patents that are foundational to the entire crypto industry, raising concerns about potential industry-wide implications.
âž¡ The SEC accused Reggie and Veritasium of fraud and manipulation, claiming they lied about having a working product. However, evidence shows that their platform was operational and even demonstrated to the SEC. Despite this, the SEC instructed them to shut down the platform due to concerns about registration. Reggie complied, but the SEC later falsely claimed the platform never existed.
âž¡ The text discusses allegations of misappropriation of funds from an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) into a personal account. The accused, Reggie Middleton, was said to have transferred cryptocurrency into a corporate account, not a personal one, to cover business expenses. Despite evidence showing the account was corporate, the allegations persisted. The text also mentions a complaint against an attorney for potentially misrepresenting evidence and not correcting false information, which could be a violation of professional conduct.
âž¡ The text discusses allegations against Reggie Middleton and his company, Veritasium, by the SEC, led by Jorge Tenrino. The SEC accused Reggie of siphoning off funds and running a Ponzi scheme, but Reggie’s supporters argue that the payments were legitimate and for services rendered to the company. They also claim that the SEC’s actions crippled the company and halted its international operations. The text also mentions allegations of witness coercion by the SEC, with one person claiming that Tenrino tried to frame him as a victim and coerce him into testifying against Reggie.
âž¡ The author was threatened by the SEC, which led to him stopping his public support for Mister Middleton and his software. The SEC also tried to seize his personal electronic devices and continued to harass him even after he had major surgery. This experience led the author to lose trust in the SEC and view it as a rogue organization. The author also discusses a similar case involving Detbox and the SEC, suggesting that the SEC’s actions may be deserving of scrutiny.
âž¡ The crypto community is encouraged to file complaints against the SEC’s actions, which they believe are negatively affecting the financial future of crypto. Even those not involved in crypto are urged to file complaints, as the SEC’s actions are seen as detrimental to everyone’s financial future. The group behind this movement is not legally qualified but has gathered substantial evidence to support their case. They invite everyone to join their fight and express their grievances to the committee for investigation.
Transcript
Just a quick break from your programming so I can give you a little information about masterpiece. They are the masters at removing toxins and heavy metals and aluminum and microplastics out of your bloodstream, out of your body. We are being bombarded with this crap from all over the place, and we need to get it out of our bodies, are more susceptible to every disease imaginable when that’s in your bloodstream. And I like masterpiece, that’s the company I endorse. Why? Because they’re the only company out there that’s actually doing trials to prove to you that their product works.
It removes graphene oxide, it removes aluminum, it removes microplastics and all sorts of toxins. You can try yours today as well by go on sarawestdel.com under shop or with the link below. Welcome to business game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have back again a group, a larger group, this time of Reggie Middleton’s co workers, people or colleagues that he’s been working with or that have been working with the very token and with the crypto space, they have put together evidence of violations by the SEC, and they’re asking people to file their own complaint because anybody who’s been in the crypto space, there’s an argument that anybody but anybody in the crypto space can file a complaint, and they’re going to explain it against the SEC.
If you’ve lost money, you’ve been affected. The reason why I’m staying on this is Reggie Middleton’s patents. And they were awarded to him, and he has successfully showed that they’re unique and they’re genuine and they’re his. And that there is something special about what he came up with with the Defi finance. The most powerful people in the world want control of his patents, and that’s what’s going on. But they also want to take down all the crypto entrepreneurs. They’ve chilled the whole industry because they want control of it. And that’s what we’re seeing here. They’re making things up.
They’re trying to steal patents, they’re trying to bankrupt people, and they’re doing it because these guys want it for themselves. They want it. They don’t want anybody else having the power because they want it. And that’s what we’re seeing here. And the opportunity exists for you to file your own complaint against the SEC. They’re going to explain, especially at the end, so stick around. They’ll explain how you can do it yourself. But the links, I’ll have two links below, one to their website where they made it easy for you to do your complaint and they actually generate a lot of it for you.
And then you can add in some of your own details. And then they also have a telegram channel where you can go there and you can ask questions and you can converse with other people who are talking about this. It’s a big deal, guys, because this really is the most valuable patents probably in the world right now. And it’s the foundation of the crypto spaces, Defi finance and the. Reggie Middleton made the mistake of being a genius in this area before they figured it out. And that’s his biggest crime, is just being a good entrepreneur and a good inventor.
And they like it more, so much that they want it. And, you know, 86% of patents in this country are stolen. I’ve covered this in the past, showing that it’s very well documented that 86% of patents are stolen. If they want it, they want to use it themselves, they steal it. If they don’t want it on the market, then they buy it out and shelve it. And maybe in the really bad cases, they’ll take out the entrepreneur or the innovator. Right. We know evidence of all those are the three methods, and the civilized method is to buy it out.
Right. Stealing it, which is what they’re trying to do with Reggie Middleton, isn’t civilized. Taking somebody out and, you know, hurting them, taking them, snuffing them out isn’t civilized. The only civilized message is buying it out. And they don’t want to do that here because they want to take it to market themselves. Anyways, I hope you listen to this whole thing and get good information from it. And actually, the more complaints, the better. We just need to stop this criminal activity at the very top. Before I get into that, I want to really tell you about gold and silver and why it’s important for you to have that.
It’s an insurance we know. Everything that we’re seeing, including here, has to do with the reset, monetary reset going on around the world. They’re looking. I’ve spent a lot of time with central, with bankers, not central bankers, but with bankers, people who are very, very astute, working on banking systems. I’ve been doing that recently, and I’m learning a lot, and there’s a lot going on right now. And I did that for multiple reasons. I wanted to understand what’s going on worldwide. I wanted to understand what this quantum financial system is, which I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s complete bunk, but doesn’t mean that there aren’t actual systems being put into place.
And people are working on it, and everyone’s working on it. The Brics are working on it. I shouldn’t say everyone. The BRICS are working on it. The central bankers are working on it. And then there’s a couple other and really promising other systems that are being put in place that maybe the BRICS will join or the central bankers are trying to steal. There’s a lot going on, and this is going to be coming out over the next. I’m going to start covering some of this, and a lot of this is going to be coming out. And this whole crypto space is really in the mix here, too.
So this is all happening now. It’s why we’re seeing the wars, it’s why we’re seeing the instability. It’s the backdrop of a lot of what’s going on. So I’m going to be covering more of this going forward. And for your safety, you really need to get into some gold and silver. It looks like the new systems are going to be backed by gold, and they’ve been suppressing this for so long. So as an insurance policy, you really need to get into gold and silver as much as you can. Silver will probably be the best investment because it’s so much more, uh, suppressed than gold is.
It’s, uh, the ratios are way out of whack, you know, gold compared to silver. So you’ll. It’ll be a better investment, but both of them are highly suppressed, and by getting into them, you’ll be protecting your assets no matter what happens. So I recommend the company I use is Miles Franklin. If you go to infoilesfranklin.com, they will give you a special. They’ll work with you. If you tell them Sarah sent me, they’ll work with you with their special price list that’s not for the public and it’s for my listeners, and it is the best prices in the industry.
And so you tell them, Sarah sent me infoilesfranklin.com and tell them you want to see the special price list that is lower than the industry that’s available to my listeners. Okay. Now let’s get into this really fascinating and important conversation with Reggie Middleton’s colleagues on DeFi finance and the patents and the SEC complaint that’s behind it. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the program. And it’s always combobulated when there’s a whole bunch of people that I tell you to welcome back. People are like, why are you talking or not? But thank you for coming back. Yeah, it’s like, what? But thank you for all coming back to the program because there’s an SEC complaint against.
We need to talk about this because almost anybody that’s using cryptos can file a complaint who’ve lost money or have some kind of damage. Can you give the overview who’s going to, I think yak is going to give the overview of what in the heck is going on and why this is so important. Okay, thanks. Thanks for having us back on, Sarah. Basically, well, just to start from the beginning and recap, just in case people are not familiar with the story, it concerns one Reginald Middleton and his group of companies, Veritasium Group of companies. Back in April May 2017, Reggie formed a company called Veritasium LLC and launched an ICO initial coin offering offering digital utility tokens called Veritokens.
They enable people to gain access to a system that, an innovative system that he developed, a platform called Vader, essentially, that gave them access to a whole host of services. But it was in its early stages when it was an ongoing development and work in progress. Unlike most white paper offerings that you get in icos, there was an actual product in existence, despite what the SEC would have us believe. Within weeks of the ICO, the SEC, the securities and Exchange Commission, launched an investigation into veritasium and Reginald Middleton, the lead, or the justification, apparently was unregistered offering of digital asset securities, itself a fabricated term, as there’s no statutory basis or foundation for that.
And that’s been shown to be the case in a number of cases, already legal cases, and by recent admission from the commissioners themselves, following a financial services committee hearing where the commissioners were quizzed about cryptocurrencies, etcetera, and their recent actions and performance. What’s puzzling is that this was known to the SEC from the very beginning. So why didn’t they file a complaint there and then, having come to the conclusion that it was an unregistered offering of digital asset securities? Don’t know. They then proceeded to go on a two year fishing expedition or investigation wherein Reggie complied with every single countless subpoenas that were served, submitted something like a million plus odd documents and devices, hard drives, you name it.
Everything. They had, absolutely everything. Reggie had cooperated completely and fully with the SEC investigation, including five full days worth of depositions on separate dates, obviously including a couple of members of his staff. But the upshot of it is, after two and a half, just over two years, I think the investigation led, they filed a complaint and an emergency temporary restraining order freezing all his and the company’s assets. But just before I go on to that, what’s puzzling about this is that some of the allegations they made in their complaint, and obviously in their evidence supporting their complaint, they said that these misappropriation and dissipation of assets occurred pretty much from day one.
Again, what’s puzzling is why on earth did they wait two and a quarter years before they filed a complaint? Again, I can’t answer that. The only person that can answer that is Jorge Tenrino, who’s responsible. Lead. Lead attorney, senior attorney for the SEC handling the case. But it’s puzzling as to why they waited two years. If some of these alleged misappropriations and alleged dissipations took place from day one, why wait two years and risk more assets being dissipated? Anyway, the other point I made is that I asked my missus a question. You had a police car trailing you.
How would you be driving? Her answer, very quickly, was very carefully. So if you’ve got the SEC breathing down your neck during the course of these investigations, how would you behave if you were in Reggie Middleton’s shoes? Wouldn’t you play everything by the book? Wouldn’t you cross the I’s and dot the t’s, so to speak? So again, these are questions that I can’t answer, but they’re obvious questions, really. At the end of the day, however, having said that following the complaint and tro was made without notice, and that for the lawyers of you, that’s ex parte seeking an emergency freeze on reduced personal assets and obviously veritasium’s assets.
That’s all the group of companies, basically. Fortunately, the judge in question is sitting as a miscellaneous judge, the Honourable Lashane Darcy Darcy hall. On the evening of the August 12, based on the evidence provided by the SEC allowed the temporary restraining order to take place. The court only heard oral arguments from council acting for Reggie and the group of companies. She wouldn’t allow a full written response so that they could properly deal with some of the allegations that were being made at the time. On the 13 August, the day after the SEC made a press release, public announcement, making the allegations contained in that press release and obviously advising the world the asset freeze had been made and making all sorts of other serious allegations concerning Reggie Middleton.
So the damage had been done. From there on, it essentially froze the company’s operations and froze their assets, leaving Reggie with very little means to be able to combat the SEC’s actions. Bearing in mind his cost ripple, something like about $200 million to fight their case. You can understand that it’s a very, very expensive business to be able to try and defend yourself and essentially prove your innocence. Well, that’s right. You’re proving they don’t have to prove guilt, you have to prove innocence. And the other thing, though, I want you to clarify, is why his patents, this is important, why this, his patents affect almost everybody in crypto, and why this SEC complaint is an industry wide situation.
Thank you very much for bringing that up. Essentially, the idea for the swaps and transfers that were transfer of value came about during sometime in 2013, and I believe Reggie did a YouTube video showing it in action. Originally, it was on the bitcoin blockchain change. The first iteration of this invention was on the bitcoin blockchain and then subsequently moved to, and obviously redone, having to rewrite code, a massive amount of code, to be able to do it on the Ethereum blockchain, providing, I guess, more flexibility, etcetera. But the essence, or the upshot of it is that it.
It is the foundation of DeFi decentralized finance. So the DeFi industry is built basically on this patent or on these series of patents. At the time those patents were pending, so nothing had been granted, despite the fact that they’d been submitted. I think originally the priority might have been submitted early 2014, but the actual patents were submitted a few months later, in 2014. So he was the first to file its foundational technology. So going after. So going after these patents, just to summarize, going after these patents, because they’re foundational technology that the entire industry is based on, going after this will take down the entire industry and allow them to gain control of it? Precisely.
It’s speculative, but I believe that the intention was to deprive Reggie of any assets, including personal assets. Hence why they try to freeze his personal assets as well. At the same time, because two and a half weeks after this action, after the 12 August. So on the 30 August. 18. Sorry, 18 days later, yes, 30 August, a minority shareholder in Veritasium Inc. Issued proceedings for, amongst other things, essentially for ownership of the patents, because the patents at this stage were obviously filed in the inventor’s name, Reginald Middleton. So it smacks of lawfare to me. As I say, I think they may have slipped up by not being able to freeze Reggie’s assets, so he was able to mount some sort of defense.
But obviously that’s a separate case. But the case itself is very, very odd. Not just what happened in the case, but I just don’t understand how and why that case was brought. The hall case was brought in the first place. This is a case involving a minority shareholder, somebody that held 0.65% of the shares in Veritasium Inc. Suing the owner, effectively, for ownership of those patents or patents pending. What’s strange about it is that he was risking basically ten times what he invested in the company, or pretty much ten times what he invested in company and potential legal fees to fight this case for ownership of the patents that were pending at the time, and that the SEC, in these documents, in their complaint and other documents pleadings, had said that the patents lacked novelty, were unlikely to be granted, and were part of some sham.
If I was your mother and you had a drug problem, I’d grab you by the ear and make you call and get help. You can be in treatment tomorrow and start to get clean in seven days. Follow mom’s advice and call the detox and treatment helpline. Now write this number, 802 877891. 802 877891. 802 877891. That’s 802 877891. So what would possess a guy like Hall, Charles hall, who was a seasoned investor in tech startups, to risk ten times his initial or original investment for patents that were pending that were described in the way that I’ve already mentioned.
What would. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. And it’s 86% of all patents are stolen. They either steal them or they take over, then buy it. They steal them when they want to use it themselves. So that’s an indication here, because they want to use it themselves and go, or they buy it out and shelve it. They can’t buy it out and shelve it, so they’re taking the stealing route. Exactly. That’s. Well, that’s what the evidence shows, because 86% of patents, this is the what happens. It’s not that. It’s very, very well documented. So you guys are dealing with that.
But this is important because this is worldwide finance. This is the entire crypto market. It’s CBdcs is everything. So it’s an important. It’s not everything, but it’s a lot of the worldwide financial market that they’re trying to go to. So let’s talk about the false allegation of platform operability and functionality. Why? What were those false allegations and what does that mean? Yeah, and I think Tom is going to talk about that. Yeah. So basically, if we look at the end result from the SEC’s view, like Jak had mentioned on August 13, 2019, there’s this SEC press release on Reggie and Veritasium.
And the title of this press release says, SEC obtains freeze on 8 million in assets in alleged fraudulent token offering and manipulation scheme. Now, in this press release, we can see the defendants, quote, claim to have a product ready to generate revenue when no such product existed. Now, if we go back roughly a year and a half to two years, in the first quarter of 2018, the Vader Veritasium platform was operational and in beta testing, including legal declarations by two individuals, and then you can even look on YouTube starting in January 21, 2018, there’s many YouTube videos showing a this working platform.
There’s demos, improvements, initial use cases. Those are all available on YouTube. And this is well before this SAC press release. Now, on or about March 9, 2018, there is a live demonstration of the platform given to the SEC, the staff in their offices, and virtually to the Washington, DC office. And apparently the staff praised Reggie on the functionality of the system. Four days later, March 13, 2018, after being praised, the SEC instructed Reggie to shut down the Vader platform through his legal counsel. Now, the concern here apparently was not that the platform wasn’t functional or non existent, that it seems it was actually the opposite.
The platform was operational, but was not operating in a true beta only mode because the system currently has real customers who have put in, quote, real money. So the concern now is that it was operational. But apparently the staff had serious concerns regarding the need for registration. Now, Reggie’s legal counsel communicate to him that the goal is to try to resolve their investigation, operate the platform in a manner that is SEC is comfortable with, and to obtain all necessary registrations to allow the business to move forward legally. So the legal counsel also communicated that we don’t want the SEC staff to think they have to run into court immediately to get a temporary restraining order halting operation of the platform.
Now, even though Reggie didn’t agree with the position of the SEC, he did comply and ended the beta testing. So a few months later. Now, on June 5, 2018, at the SEC’s office, we have Reggie was being deposed by Jorge Tenriero. And during the deposition, a question was asked by Jorge, clearly stating that he witnessed an operable and functioning vader platform. So this question, there’s one specific question, and I think, quote, and I think one of the features, but you know, you will correct me, surely, that one of the features that you showed us of the Vader in beta mode was the ability to use very tokens to gain exposure to a set of digital assets.
Is that correct? So here he was, clearly, he clearly witnessed an operational platform. But a year and a half later, the press release claimed that it just didn’t exist. So they just made it up and said that no platform exists when it really did. So it was just a lie. That’s pretty. Yeah, and that’s, that’s the, that’s one of the main points of their lawsuit, which is stupid. It’s not true. Okay, so let’s move on to manipulation of trading and failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest by the SEC. Right, so who we’re going to talk to William about this? What in the heck is going on there? Well, it’s very interesting, this part of it.
Now refer to my notes. The first thing they did was it comes under the statute. It’s here to establish a claim of market manipulation under section nine a two of the Exchange act. The SEC must show that Mister Middleton engaged in a series of transactions in any security. There’s where the first problem is, because we already know. Well, how can they claim there was no operating system, but yet he wasn’t doing this at the same time? Isn’t that like. No, no, this was, this was at, this was on the ether Delta exchange. Okay. Okay. This is the decentralized exchange we’re getting.
So that’s what they, that’s what they were doing. And so that was the first, that was the first part of it. So the SEC relied on two different expert witnesses. The first one was a blockchain data analyst and his name was Patrick. Dude. And he came in and analyzed what Reggie had done in terms of coming into. Onto ether delta. He came in because it was the first time that Burry had been put on ether delta decentralized exchange. So Reggie came in to test it for liquidity. How did it act and thus, and things along that line.
And so he proceeded to do that. But Patrick dude manipulated how his impression of what Reggie was doing. He was putting trades in that were basically just transactions, things like this, and accused him of manipulating and sending tokens to his own wallet and things like that when he didn’t actually own them. It loan to Veritasium LLC or incorporated. So as he did that, in that terms, he even found that there were errors on the exchange and he contacted the, I think through another media person, contacted the owner to let them know that this is how they could fix it.
And the owner went in and implemented that to provide more security within the own exchange. So this is totally contrary to what one would do if they were manipulating on the exchange. On it. One of the things that is important that should go on the front was that Patrick dude, as a blockchain analyst, also had ownership in a company called Lillipad LLC, which invested in cryptocurrencies. He never disclosed that to the SEC or to, to the court. In fact, he actually, on two subsequent presentations as an expert witness for the SEC, he disclosed that information. So if he had disclosed it to the, to the court at that time, it would have been cast out because it was a conflict of interest.
Well, okay, two things. Two things. Wouldn’t Reggie need to do that to test out his system? Yes, thats the point. See, what he did is he took Reggie’s first trades in there and looked like a lot of his first actions, and they were ins and outs too. He was buying and selling to test it. So thats not an indication of that. And the very proof of this is the fact that if you go look at the price of very token when he started that and even before that, it was at $19. Well, after his, after June, this was in on May 31, he did the first one.
Then I think it was on June 4 that he did the second to validate it. Well, shortly thereafter, the token was still at, was down to $18.89. And actually at the end of July, the token was still at $18.89. So he lost ten cents. I mean, there’s no, no evidence of market manipulation. And in fact, what it did is it opened a way for Veritoken to be sold, because if you look at the number of transactions before and you compare them with after what Reggie did, it’s significantly more after he had opened it up to ether Delta, the decentralized exchange.
So there was no market manipulation. I mean, I have a hard time thinking that the man who invented the foundational technology in peer to peer transaction, didn’t know how to manipulate the market if he wanted to. That’s right. He didn’t. He could have. He could have, but he didn’t. Well, no, he did. Yeah, just. Sorry, just to just add something there, Sarah. The flaw that Reggie had picked up, that he picked up and relayed to the principle at Ether delta was capable of being manipulated in such a way to manipulate the price. So if you were someone that was minded to manipulate the price, you would have taken advantage of that flaw and not told anyone.
He actually told the owner picked up on that floor and told the owner of Ether Delta, or arranged for one of his colleagues to contact them and explain the nature of the floor so that he could implement the fix to ensure that that manipulatable activity couldn’t take place. So it just does not make sense. The allegations regarding manipulation of the price of the very token doesn’t make sense at all. Yeah, sorry for interjecting there. Well, let’s talk about the Kraken account, because I know a lot of people have Kraken accounts and they want to. And this is involved as well.
How does the Kraken account ownership come into play in this case? Well, Reggie had opened an account with Kraken to convert cryptocurrency, primarily ether, into fiat currency in order to be able to fund the business. There is considerable correspondence that was disclosed to the SEC relating to the opening of the account and that was produced, and it’s also exhibited in the actual dossier that we’ve produced as well as the complaint. Now, what’s relevant is the vast majority of funds went through that crack in account. The problem is that Jorge Tenrino, in his complaint, stated that the Kraken account was a personal account and hence the allegations that Reggie was misappropriating funds from the ICO into his own personal account.
That’s where the allegations of misappropriation come from. And so that was an outright. Well, I say an outright lie. He should. Jorge Tenreiro should have known that that account was a corporate account based on the documents that he was provided. He became aware that there was a crack in account in existence more than a year before the 12 August the actual tRo, the freezing order, took place. So he had plenty of time and resources to be able to find out definitively who exactly owned the address that that account belonged to. In an effort, in a declaration made by Patrick Doody, their expert, he says that Kraken indicated that the account belonged either to Reggie Middleton or Eleanor Reed.
Now, it’s beyond me how Kraken would indicate, wouldn’t be sure of exactly who the account would belong to, but that’s exactly what was stated, word for word, pretty much what was stated in Doody’s declaration. So how there can be some ambivalence about it is beyond me. But be that as it may, even where there was some ambiguity concerning the account, Tenrino pushed ahead and stated in his complaint that the account actually belonged to Reggie Middleton personally. And this is on a number of occasions, a number of paragraphs that relate to, and it wasn’t his account. And what was going, what was going on with the account that they were accusing him of? It was a veritasium LLC corporate account, a tier four corporate account.
And what was happening is that Reggie was transferring ether and possibly bitcoin into that account so that he could convert it into fiat and pay for his ongoing expenses for the business. So to suggest or imply, well, he actually expressly stated that the account was his personally and not just him, but also the experts pretty much said the same thing that was in Doody’s first declaration. But after that first declaration and after the trO, Reggie submitted a comprehensive declaration dealing with all the allegations, including this, and produced volumes of exhibits to show that that account was not a personal account, but was indeed a corporate account.
It is only as a result of that declaration and that error being pointed out, I say error in inverted commas being pointed out, that they subsequently, the experts subsequently corrected their declarations and said, ah, yeah, maybe we were wrong, mistaken about that. I’d read Doody, then gives some other explanation and excuse as to why he thought the account was a personal account based on some application forms and obviously correspondence that he’d seen, but he’d clearly seen the correspondence taking place regarding the account, open the account, opening of the account because of the use of Eleanor Reed’s name, and also they can show it in coming in and out of an actual corporate account and reggie not taking advantage of it personally.
Right, right. Yes, correct. So they just are. They’re just trying to come up with something to nail them on making things up. So let’s. Let’s talk. That just seems like. So that seems very trivial and just trying to tie things in to make it seem bad when it’s not. Let’s talk about. Go ahead. And I just add. Sorry, sorry to interrupt, Sarah, can I just add, because what’s prompted the filing of this complaint was the response that we got from, in relation to a FOIA request that we made, because it’s clear from the evidence that was produced to the court in order to obtain the tro that they were inferring that there was communication between Kraken and the SEC regarding ownership of the account.
So we made a formal request, a FOIA request of the SEC, regarding any communications between Kraken and themselves, including their experts, and they responded back with a confirmation that there had been absolutely no communications whatsoever. None. So how on earth could they possibly come to the conclusion that the Kraken account was a personal account without verifying with the one entity that could confirm definitively who actually owned that Kraken account? So whether they served a subpoena or not, but the response to the FOIA requests that we received was a confirmation that there was no communications whatsoever. Okay, so basically, I mean, we’re just going through details of the case showing that their case was.
A lot of it was fabricated. And the point is there’s a complaint against the attorney that he. Can. Can somebody explain what this complaint against the attorney is? Well, in essence, he should. He owes a. He’s required to ensure that he is truthful in the evidence that he’s producing. And he should. He should have. He knew, and it’s my view, my personal view, that they did know exactly who owned the account from the documentation that had already been submitted to them following the subpoenas that they’d received. So I’m. I’m convinced that they knew, but that’s me, my personal view.
But they knew or ought to have known. And it, had they been diligent in ensuring the. And verified the ownership of that account, then they would have known themselves and wouldn’t have made the allegations concerning misappropriation, etcetera. But their allegations of misappropriation were pretty much central to their success in getting a temporary freezing order. So he’s basically broken the law. And not only that, once they found out that the Kraken account was a corporate account, although the experts corrected their declarations, Jorge himself made absolutely no mention whatsoever about this correction, made no efforts to correct this falsehood at all, which is in itself a violation of, I think, it’s statutory violations as well as professional conduct violations.
So he’s guilty of misconduct, serious misconduct, in my view, as bad as, if not worse than what took place in the detbox case. Well, and let’s talk a little bit more, and then I want to get into a couple more things that we want to cover about the case, and then I want to get into what the ramifications are of their actions and how it’s. It’s cooled the industry. People have lost billions and billions of dollars because of it. And entrepreneurs are afraid to do anything anymore because, I mean, they essentially killed the entrepreneurial spirit because they falsely accused people and attacked people.
And that’s probably what they wanted to do. The central bankers and these very powerful entities want to scare the heck out of these entrepreneurs, put them in their place, take over the industry, and make it so that they’re afraid to be. To bring any kind of innovation into this space because they want it themselves. I mean, that’s what I’m seeing. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about these overseas payments and the CEO salary. I assume this was. They brought this into what he was being paid and what these oversea payments were. Yeah, this stacks against all the other evidence that we’re pointing out that the falsities of the Jorge Tenrero misrepresenting the evidence.
Whereas first it was gathered by a woman named misses Daniello. She was a staff accountant in the investigations unit of the SEC, and she analyzed all the data of transactions going in and out with the LLC of Veritasium. In her analysis, she determined that there were a number of funds that were missing. And so the claim was that there was a misappropriation of funds, essentially accusing Reggie of money laundering, using the platform to steal money. And so on top of that, Reggie comes back with over 400 pages of documentation to validate all the records. Then further along Daniello, she comes back in a declared statement within the follow up evidence that was submitted later on by Tynrero.
And in that evidence was another ten pages that cover the admission to the fact that she made mistakes, the admission to the fact that she had then corrected them. Numerous. I was littered with language like assumptions for taking assumptions taking for granted, using the words like seemingly looking as though which. How can anyone base those words on verified facts? And so then what happened is tenuero came. I guess it was the final hearing, and minutes before the hearing, they dropped three pages of, I’m sorry, three inches worth of documentation on Reggie Middleton’s legal defense team. How long? How much before? Oh, it was just.
It was declared within minutes. So they had no time, no time to go through the documentation, so they could never really come up with a defense. Next thing you know, the hearing was made. That’s not right though, right? You need to give people proper time to look at the materials so they can defend themselves. I mean, that’s the legal president. That’s the law. Yeah, I don’t. Sorry. That was in relation to the initial complaint and tro. When they. When they first filed their complaints on the 12 August. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Their poor counsel was having to thumb through three inches of documents, a bundle of documents, just before the hearing, so had no time to prepare whatsoever.
Right, and this is. What was it, the. They had no time to prepare a defense, but with. How do I say this now? Excuse me, I’m losing my train of thought now. Yes, sorry, Liam, I apologize. With regards to the overseas payments, it was sub. I mean, Roseanne Daniello was clearly, as a staff accountant, was crossing off invoices against international payments that were being made and produced a list and indeed an exhibit, a comprehensive exhibit, where all these funds went to all overseas, bearing in mind that an awful lot of business that Reggie was conducting was with overseas contractors.
So these overseas payments that Jorge Tanrino was alleging were basically signing off, siphoning off monies outside of the us jurisdiction, were in fact contractual payments made to subcontractors of the company for goods and services rendered to the company. And Tenrino knew that, but again, failed to make that clear. In fact, he persists with his allegations of moving funds outside of the us jurisdiction as if it’s some sort of, like Liam said, a money laundering operation, which it absolutely was not. So they’re just. They’re crafting a case and it’s not. It’s like they’re just making it up.
What can we do to take him down and make it. That’s what it appears that it looks like. Go ahead. I want to add that it was an emergency. Troll order emergency. They were rushing to get this done, to shut him down and they were forcing him to freeze his assets and that basically crippled the company. And everything had fallen down at that point forward. Everything that Reggie had put together with the Jamaican Stock Exchange, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, other engagements that he had with various accounts of ten different cities that he was working. I’m sorry, ten different exchanges he’s working about with throughout the world.
And so he was well established as becoming a international operation, for sure. Okay, well, let’s talk about the witness coercion, because I think that is one of the most. That really points to what we’re dealing with, the coercion of witnesses to try to back up their story, which. That’s what it is, a story. Can you. Who wants to talk about this? Hey, Sarah, this is Trey Kupp. I’m probably one of the only individuals here that had direct conversations with Mister Tinrero of the SEC. And let me preface my statements by saying we’re in the fight of our financial life here in the US.
The actions of the SEC have put us way behind the ball as far as entrepreneurs and businessmen wanting to take a risk to innovate, to improve the lives of Americans. And one of the reasons that we started the very dow early on was because we realized that Reggie’s original patents were the underlying foundation of our financial future. And this is our future, our children’s future, and our children’s children’s future. So we realized early on when the SEC took action against Mister Middleton that it was, no, no, it was nefarious and it was going to affect our lives for hundreds of years to come.
So I actually got a call from Mister Taniero on or around the 28 June 2018, and he left a message on my private number. I’m not sure actually how he got it. My only recollection is maybe he took down some email exchanges between Reggie and myself and then got my telephone number. He left a message and said, you know, Mister Teniero from the SEC. We’re prosecuting or gathering evidence about a potential prosecution of Mister Reggie Middleton and Veritasium, Inc. I didn’t return his call immediately. On or about the 29th of 2018, I returned the call and decided to have a conversation with Mister Tynrero.
During my conversation, it was an unusually long conversation. And as I explained to you before, I’m a businessman and entrepreneur, so I know how prosecutors are supposed to act when they’re gathering evidence in a potential case. They’re supposed to ask questions, and they’re supposed to gather evidence by asking questions and not making statements. The unusual thing about my phone call with Mister Tynrero was he was making statements about the case which were trying to lead me in a particular direction. And what I mean by that is he tried to frame me as the victim of a Ponzi scheme.
He did this multiple times throughout our conversation, which I thought was kind of strange. During our conversation, he said that there was a possible action against Reggie Middleton. He told me that Reggie had had an initial coin offering the previous year, and they were potentially investigating him for sales of unregistered securities. Well, I pushed back on Mister Tynero at that point and described to him that we had all, everybody that decided to participate in what I call the initial distribution offering, not the initial coin offering. One of the most consequential lies of history is that Karl Marx put forth an economic theory or doctrine.
He did not. He put forth a totalitarian religion. This was a rape of the body of Christ. He said the ultimate objective was to destroy Christianity. Those were his words. And Khrushchev bragged about it. We’ll take America without firing a shot. Hi. I’m here to impoverish, enslave, and murder you. They were actual communists. The result, you can see we have to save hope. There are ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing all over the place. We had all signed a disclosure statement saying that we understood that we were buying utility tokens, providing access to a platform. And I actually participated in the beta that was discussed earlier for this platform.
And it was really eloquent. It was really beautifully written code. The platform performed beautifully. It did exactly what reggie said it was going to do. So there were no misleading statements by Mister Middleton to the folks that decided to participate in the IDO. And furthermore, everything that he said would happen happened perfectly. So fast forward again to our conversation. Mister Tonrero asked me to be a witness for the SEC against Mister Middleton, again, framing me as the victim of a Ponzi scheme. And I pushed back and I told Jorge that I had no interest in participating in a lie, and I had no interest in helping the SEC in what I saw as a misuse of federal funds.
Prosecuting a man who is not guilty, or not even close to guilty of the allegations that he was making on the phone call. You were. Obviously he was trying to coerce you. Was he? Do you have evidence of him trying to coerce other witnesses as well? I did. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry, Trey. Apologies. We have today. Last time we were on the show, we mentioned that there was one particularly egregious situation that I’d come across, or that we’d come across, that the guy was too afraid to step forward. I’m pleased to say that that gentleman has stepped forward now as a result of what we’ve been doing and filing this complaint.
And I’d really, really like to read out what he’s written, if I may. His cover email to the New York bar. The New York bar complaint reads, please find attached my complaint against Jorge Tenrero for his professional misconduct and tortious interference in the Reginald Milsim veritasim case. Considering the blowback I encountered from the SEC the last time I publicly supported Mister Middleton, I hesitated prior to going public to you with my own story. However, without the harmed persons, such as myself, speaking out, no one will know what has really been transpiring. Unseen and generally hidden from the public, I respectfully request an acknowledgement that my correspondence has been received.
That was his cover email, his victim impact statement that accompanies his complaint reads. In August of 2019, after the SEC went public with their investigation in Mister Middleton, a number of supporters and token holders from the Veritasium official Telegram room wrote personal affidavits in support of Mister Middleton, including myself. At the time, I had a YouTube channel which featured demonstrations of the Veritasium platform, software platform Mister Middleton had created called the Vada. I was a beta tester of the software from the initial beta release until it was shut down as a result of the SEC charges, volunteering to find bugs and writing user manuals on how to test the software.
Immediately upon receipt of my affidavit, the SEC subpoenaed me for a deposition. Presumably this was due to my highly visible role in the Veritasium community and because of my Vtest YouTube channel, as I was scheduled to have major spinal surgery subsequent to the deposition and was unable to travel. The meeting was scheduled as a video conference from the SEC’s office and their headquarters. Prior to this encounter, my view of the SEC was as an impartial regulator doing their job protecting investors. This view was soon to change. The SEC team was led by Jorge Tenerero, Victor Suthmannant, and Karen Willinken, and also consisted of multiple other unnamed SEC personnel in both headquarters and Blank, including a local SEC security representative.
Before the interview started, the SEC’s video conferencing software glitched, resulting in the interviewers being able to see me, but I could only hear and not see them. After a 30 year career in it, including a number of positions in telecommunications, I immediately sensed something was afoul. Confirmation came when the line of questioning quickly turned aggressive, abusive, and threatening. It was clear this meeting was intended to scare me into silence through threats of multiple felony charges against me for supporting Mister Middleton, testing his software, and publicizing the results through my YouTube channel. Ultimately, the threats were effective in halting my further public support of Mister Middleton, including any further social media postings for fear of the SEC making good on their words.
The tone and direction of the SEC interviewers was not what I expected of an impartial investigation of a friendly witness. Through the questioning, I became aware that the SEC has a large it team monitoring all the various veritasium chat rooms, recording all communications, and tracking leading members of the veritasium community. They clearly have a very large budget to monitor just this one community. I was ordered to divulge personal details on other high profile members of the telegram chat room. When I was unable to provide the desired answers, the headquarters SEC staff ordered the local SEC security person to confiscate my mobile phone.
I refused to comply and retained possession of my device in the days after my video deposition. In the days after my video deposition, I had major surgery on my spine. Upon discharge from the hospital stay, the SEC’s attack on me immediately resumed. While continuing to threaten me with abusive language, the SEC’s demands for more information escalated to the point they attempted to seize all of my personal electronic devices, including phones, laptops and computers. It was extremely difficult to recover, heal and rehabilitate physically and emotionally in the weeks and months after major surgery while enduring the SECs ongoing harassment.
Months later, when Mister Middleton settled the case, the SEC was forced to end their involvement with me, but not before turning me over to the DOJ with one final round of threats. After the DOJ reviewed the same evidence provided to the SEC, I received no further contact. As collateral damage of this event, I no longer have ownership access to the YouTube channel, but it is still publicly available in read only mode as a testament to the powerful vedar software and intellectual property that Mister Middleton has invented. In addition to loss of the YouTube channel, I dramatically scaled back my public social media and telegram room postings.
The SEC incident had a severe chilling effect on my behaviour as I took their threats seriously and did not desire any further incidents. One big loss is my trust that the SEC was a fair regulator instead replaced with my new view of the SEC as a rogue organization no longer serving its stated mission. So further to these losses, I no longer have the utility usage of the Veritoken as prepaid software to the Vader platform and future Veritasium platforms. As a beta tester of the Veda, I saw firsthand its power to disintermediate the big entrenched players and level the playing field for everyone alike.
This was five years ago. It’s hard to imagine the advancements in the global crypto space the platform and Mister Middleton could have accomplished since then. End of statement. Wow, pretty powerful statement and nobody should be treated that way. That’s the whole point. And let’s get into the debt box and Veritas, I’m pronouncing it right comparisons because the very Middleton’s company and Detbox and how they treated them is similar. Who wants to talk about because Detbox. They made up. They made up facts, they made things up. They found out that they were they got fined for $1.8 million and you believe they’re doing the same thing to him? We do.
I think the dead box case is important because it does prove past misconduct. And I think we can all agree here that some regulatory enforcement is needed, agencies like the SEC is needed. So we’re not. We’re just questioning the actions of some of the staff, specifically Jorge Tenreiro. So in a, in a letter to Gary Gensler from the senators JD Vance, Tom Tillis, Bill Haggerty, Cynthia Loomis and Katie Boyd, Britt, I’m going to quote this because it’s pretty powerful here. So, in response to the judge Shelby’s claims, the commission wrote in a December filing that commission counsel made representation during the July 28 hearing that, unbeknownst to him and at the time, was inaccurate, and that the commission’s attorneys failed to correct the statement when they learned of the inaccuracy.
So this statement suggests an error was one of negligence rather than malevolence. But even this charitable explanation is unacceptable. That the commission counsel could be so unfamiliar with the relevant facts of the case, and that the commission’s attorneys could have such little regard for the veracity of evidence presented to the court is deeply troubling. Regardless of whether commission staff deliberately misrepresented evidence or unknowingly presented false information, this case suggests other enforcement cases brought by the commission may be deserving of scrutiny. It is difficult to maintain confidence that other cases are not predicated upon dubious evidence, obfuscations or outright misrepresentations.
So the judge ultimately sanctioned the SEC, like we said, 1.8 million, and dismissed the case. And they closed the offices there. It’s important because, like I said, this does prove past misconduct. And this was specifically in their attempt at getting a tro or a temporary restraining order against detbox, which aligns with some of the evidence shown here in the complaint. You know, everyone’s pretty much summed up a lot of the issues in the complaint. One of them, I guess, is the patents. So Jorge Tenreiro alleged that these patents were, while they were still being in the process of approval.
He claimed that they had no validity or they had no novelty, I think it was the word he used. But they were approved, right? Not at the time, no. But they are. They are now five. Yeah. So now they’re. They’re approved and they just are. They just can’t stand it. They want these patents. Sure. And they’re trying every way they can. Yeah. They just go ahead and even Coinbase, like I’ve mentioned before, failed an IPR challenge to try and invalidate these patents. And also unified patents set out a bounty to try and find prior art for the patents, and both failed in their attempts.
And Reggie would work with everybody. Right? I mean, he doesn’t have this, I want to control the world and nobody can do this. He would work with people. He’s. It’s just these people. Just. It’s how that. What they do with patents, they take them over. Yes. And like you mentioned, that the 86% are invalidated. This is the IPR challenge that Coinbase tried to do. Well, they steal them. They invalidate. Or they claim that. Yes, you’re right. Sure. So, yeah, they claim prior art to the patent, or they. Or whatever this process they’re using. Yes. Yeah. So Reggie’s actually past that.
Past that point. So his. His patents has essentially been tested and validated now. Yeah. So now they’re having to go after it differently because there’s really big players. This is. They’re realizing, oh, my gosh, this is really to everything we want to do in the crypto space or a lot of what we want to do. We want these patents. We could probably do other things, but we want what he did. And so that’s why they’re not giving up on it. Exactly. I mean, if you look at the patents themselves, they’ve been cited 134 times now, but.
Yeah, 134 times by institutions like Nasdaq, Wells Fargo, bank of America, TD Bank, RBC Bank, Ripple, Coinbase. So it’s an extensive list that people or companies that have cited these patents. It’s a big deal. It is a big deal. It is. Yeah. This is not trivial. And to go back real quick, Reggie actually did try to work with the SEC. He wanted regulatory clarity. He really. For two years, I believe, and at a significant cost and time and effort. His biggest mistake is he came up with something really good. I agree. I mean, he actually did something good and what they wanted.
Well, let’s talk about the web forms and tools. What do you mean by that? What do you want to share about that? Well, some of the community members have put together a platform that includes the complaint, but also allows. Okay. Yeah. So people can learn about what’s really going on. You have put together a website and tools for them to learn about the complaint, what’s behind it, what’s in the patent. It help educate them on the whole crypto space. Someone else could better speak to that, actually. Yeah, I’m one of the developers along with Tom, and the two of us worked on putting together a system so that we can make life easy.
Basically, for the token holders of, whether it be veritasium, ripple, debtbox, anyone, it doesn’t matter. Anyone can participate. It gives you an opportunity to. If I could first state that, coming from my own perspective as a victim of the circumstances that we’re all suffering here as a consequence of the FCC’s actions, what are we to do? What can we do? I had no clue what I would do unless I find these guys. That’s what the effort’s really about. We’re trying to make that simple so that other people can not have to work through all the hard efforts that we put together already.
It just automatically generates the PDF that they need. It automatically puts all of the evidence back in their statement. All they have to do is now craft their own statement and make a testimony. They pop that testimony. Who can do this? Like people who owned now obviously, who own very tokens. But how about Ripple? Who owned Ripple or who owned what other coins are, what other cryptos? Absolutely anybody within the crypto industry. Absolutely anyone. I would, Sarah, I would go one step further. As I said before, we’re in the fight for our financial freedom here. And you know, what the SEC has done under Gensler’s leadership and before that, when they started prosecuting reggie, is they’ve, they’ve said, we’re going to take the USA down.
We’re not going to let you guys participate. So anybody who’s been involved in crypto can go to very, very dao IO, forward slash page, forward slash complaint, forward slash tonero. There’s also links if you just go to Variedao IO and file a complaint. And I would encourage anybody who thinks, even if you haven’t participated in the crypto space, our financial future is crypto. And so even if you haven’t participated, you’ve been affected in a, in a bad way by the SEC’s actions because your financial future is being put in reverse, not going forward. So anybody who wants to file a complaint who thinks they may be, have been adversely affected by the SEC’s actions, even if you’re not involved in crypto, can file a complaint.
In addition to that, I would also add that Tenrero is involved in, has been involved in a number of high profile cases and ongoing cases such as Kraken, Coinbase, Binance, I think he was of council were there. I encourage all Kraken holders, account holders, any exchange account holders to file complaints as well, or at least read what we’ve put together. And if you agree with what we’ve put together and agree with the findings that we’ve made from the evidence that we’ve attached to the document, then by all means, submit a complaint, because you will have also been harmed by these proceedings.
But I would add that if you have any connections to the legals at Kraken or Binance or Coinbase or ripple for that matter, I would get a hold of them and invite them to review what we’ve put together. We admit that we’re not us attorneys. We’re certainly not experts in this field. We’ve got no qualifications in that respect. We just a bunch of token holders that have put our heads together and try to make sense of what the devastation that’s been caused by this debacle, this SEC debacle. So I did actually try and make contact with Marco Santori from Kraken.
I think he’s their chief legal officer. He’s got a legal team there. And I also wrote an email to Brian Armstrong at Coinbase inviting him to contact me. As I’ve got information to share, I’m confident that you will be able to find information and ammunition that you could use in your cases to, at the very least, get Tenreiro dismissed from your cases with the possibility of getting your cases dismissed, whether that’s with or without prejudice, is down to how your lawyers played at the end of the day. But I invite you all to join our fight and do take action in some way.
I mean, you can join us, file a complaint, make our grievances known to the committee so that they can investigate. But I would also invite Congress, whom we’ve been emailing and contacting, and sending the dossier and other information to not only Congress members, but other legal journals, etcetera, to make known what has happened here and familiarize themselves with the facts that are contained in the dossier. And obviously, this latest thing is the complaint itself. We’ve not necessarily published a complaint, but it is published on the website, as Trey has confirmed. But you’re all invited to take a look, view our findings.
And if you agree and you agree with the findings that we’ve made, then file a complaint because it concerns us all. Well, thank you so much. I’ll have the link below so people can learn more. They can file their complaint, they can do whatever. Is there someone they can contact there? Dude, I know it’s hard. You’re not going to be able to contact everybody, but can they try? Is there a contact anywhere? Is there an email that we’ve got available? We did try and set up a couple of specific emails for legal, but we were concerned about using the word legal because as I say, we’re not legally qualified to give advice or represent anybody at all.
Hold on a second. Hold on a second. When you say legally qualified, I would say that most attorneys aren’t even legally qualified. They are. So I would say you’re not, you’re not stamped of approval by our us government to be able to do that. That’s a better way of saying it. Yeah. We’re not certificated. Should I say that? Yeah, not certificated in any way. But it doesn’t mean that we’re ignorant people. We can read, so. And we can understand and ask critical questions. So. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I would. I mean, we’ve got the telegram group that people can join to, so that’s the best place, almost.
Join the telegram group and then other people can converse and they can ask questions and things. Correct. Yeah. And so if you can give me the link to this website into the Telegram group and then people can look at both, that would be wonderful. Yeah, sorry. The website is very v e r I dow da. Oh, that’s the website. And you’ll be able to find a host of information there and hopefully links to the actual complaint as well. Liam? Yeah, yeah. Look for the quill of justice. It’s posted on the top of the page and that’ll lead you right to this complaint.
And I want to add too, that there’s this, the PDF generator that we created. Just taking consideration the fact that there’s about 1300 pages of documentation and what we’ve done is simplified it down into a readable format so that you can actually get through it within a reasonable amount of time and get a full understanding of what’s going on. So I encourage everyone to read it is, you know, at least comprehend the complexities of the case. And if you want to dig deeper, it’s built in a way that you can continue to channel yourself down. Look at all these supporting evidence and if you really want to read 1300 pages, feel free.
It’s all, it’s all there and available for you to read. Okay, well, thank you. Thank you so much. Any last thing you want to add? I think I. Yeah, just one thing I wanted to add there with regards to the complaint and filing of the complaint, we’ve submitted a hard copy to the committee and they, and we’ve contacted them and they’ve confirmed to us that they only really need one hard copy of everything. So anyone else that submits a complaint can file it electronically. There’s no. And they can submit their hard copy of just the complaint form itself, if they so desire, but it must obviously be signed electronically, so they don’t necessarily need to submit.
1300 odd, I think it’s 1313 pages of the complaint. And the attachments, the exhibits there, too. All they need to do is just file electronically. The committee have already been furnished with a hard copy of all the evidence. So the more complaints, the better. Absolutely. The more complaints, the better. The more publicity we, the people need to express our voice here. Correct. Well, thank you so much for joining the program. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you very much, Sarah. Appreciate it.
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