Executives Settle ICO Scam Charges

Two former executives behind an allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) that was stopped by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year have been ordered in federal court to pay nearly $2.7 million and prohibited from serving as officers or directors of public companies or participating in future offerings of digital securities. AriseBank’s then-CEO Jared Rice Sr. and then-COO Stanley Ford were accused of offering and selling unregistered investments in their purported “AriseCoin” cryptocurrency by depicting AriseBank as a first-of-its-kind decentralized bank offering a variety of services to retail investors. “Rice and Ford lied to AriseBank’s investors by pitching the company as a first-of-its kind decentralized bank offering its own cryptocurrency for customer products and services,” said Shamoil T.