- The Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against Jonathan Adam and Tanner Adam over a $60 million Ponzi scheme.
- The SEC says it obtained emergency relief to freeze the brothers’ assets.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges against two brothers it says ran a $60 million Ponzi scheme that affected more than 80 investors across the United States.
According to the SEC’s press release on Aug. 26, Jonathan Adam and Tanner Adam attracted investors by promising an unusually high return of 13.5% per month on their investments.
The brothers told investors that Jonathan had developed a crypto “bot” capable of identifying arbitrage opportunities on a cryptocurrency trading platform. They also claimed investor funds would be placed into a lending pool and assured clients that, “short of a global market meltdown, investor funds were safe.”
Deception and misuse of funds
In truth, the SEC alleges, the operation was a fraud designed to mislead unsuspecting investors. The complaint says Jonathan concealed a prior securities fraud conviction from potential investors.
Rather than generating legitimate returns, the brothers reportedly used new investor money to pay purported monthly returns to earlier investors and diverted significant sums for personal use. The SEC’s complaint claims the defendants spent millions on personal purchases, including payments on a $30 million Miami condominium and roughly $480,000 on luxury vehicles.
On Monday, the SEC said it secured emergency relief from the court to freeze the brothers’ assets to preserve funds for potential restitution to harmed investors.
The regulator filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia and named the brothers’ businesses—GCZ Global and Triten Financial Group—as defendants for violating federal securities anti-fraud provisions. The SEC noted that the brothers did not contest the asset freeze.
The agency is seeking a permanent injunction against Jonathan and Tanner Adam, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and civil monetary penalties.