US court orders Crowd Machine and Metavine to return more than $19.67 million in illegal crypto ICO funds

The Northern District Court of California in the United States issued a revised final judgment, ordering defendants Crowd Machine and Metavine to return $19,676,401.27 raised from investors in the fraudulent issuance of unregistered cryptographic asset securities, plus $3,358,147.75 in pre-judgment interest. The SEC complaint alleged that defendants Crowd Machine and Metavine, as well as founder Craig Sproule, made significant false and misleading statements in the unregistered issuance and sale of cryptographic asset securities, which they referred to as Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCT). The court ruled that the defendants and their subsidiary Metavine Pty jointly and severally pay a $5 million confiscation penalty, and ordered each defendant to pay a $600,000 civil penalty.