Cryptocurrency Ormeus coin turns out to be a scam. U.S. government agencies filed criminal charges against JonAtina "Tina" Barksdale and John Barksdale for frauding its investors $124 million through their crypto coin.
However, despite the fraudulent activities behind the coin, it is still circulating and is actively traded in the market.
Barksdale's Ormeus Coin
As investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the cryptocurrency Ormeus coins turns out to be a scam.
U.S. authorities have reportedly filed criminal charges against the Barksdale siblings for defrauding more than 20,000 investors of their digital crypto token Ormeus Coin.
The siblings were able to raise $120 million worth of investments that were spent personally for travel, hotel accommodations, investments, and real estate.
The siblings promoted Ormeus Coin through various marketing strategies. John would be traveling the world to pitch his coin in person.
As reported by The Guardian, the siblings will also do roadshows and Tina will do social media and advertising campaigns, including a Times Square jumbotron in Manhattan proclaiming: "$250 Million Cryptocurrency Mining Farm Revealed in Legal Audit by Ormeus Coin."
As reported by Business Insider, the SEC said, "To preserve the fiction that Ormeus Coin was successfully mining crypto, the Barksdales arranged for a public website to display a wallet of an unrelated third party showing more than $190 million in assets as of November 2021, even though the Ormeus wallets were worth less than $500,000".
Cryptocurrency News: False Claim of Barksdale Siblings
The siblings launched the coin in 2017, boasting the token as a type of asset that can be verified using cryptography.
According to the Ormeus Coin website, the coin is described as: "A new digital money system backed by a fully-audited industrial crypto-mining operation. Revenue from the mining farm is cryptographically tied to the Ormeus Reserve Vault (ORV) through proof of asset technology and self-executing Ethereum Blockchain smart contracts."
According to the charges in Manhattan federal court, John Barksdale enticed investors stating that the coin is backed up with the largest cryptocurrency mining operations worth $250 million.
Another lie he told the investors is claiming that the crypto mining operations they own have a minimum monthly revenue of $5 million. In addition, the siblings also claimed they have 3,000 worth of Bitcoin in their reserved vault.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York stated that the siblings' claims behind their cryptocurrency mining operation are far from the truth.
Their operations never reached $250 million and their revenue never surpassed $1 million in any given month. It has also been revealed that the Bitcoin Reserve Vault is not owned by their operations but by a third party.
The pair allegedly abandoned their crypto-mining operation in 2019 after having generated less than $3 million in total revenue, the SEC said. They continued to pitch Ormeus Coin to investors and even claimed revenue from the operation had increased to $8 million a month.
The Ormeus coin is still listed in the market nowadays despite the Department of Justice and the SEC filing fraudulent charges to its founders.
According to CoinMarketCap, the Ormeus coin price today is at $0.00341.
