SEC and Kim Kardashian agree on a $1.26M fine for promoting Cryptocurrency!

The WashingtonPost.com reported that “The Securities and Exchange Commission charged reality star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian with promoting a cryptocurrency on her Instagram account without disclosing how much she was paid to do so, the agency announced…”  The October 3, 2022 article entitled “Kim Kardashian to pay $1.26 million in SEC crypto case” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/03/sec-kardashian-crypto/) included these comments:

Kardashian has agreed to pay $1.26 million in penalties to settle the charges and will cooperate with the SEC’s investigation, the agency said. Kardashian was paid $250,000 to tout EMAX tokens, sold by EthereumMax, to her tens of millions of followers in a June 2021 post.

The star has 330 million Instagram followers, making her promotions quite valuable. And because she was hawking an investment product that the SEC says qualified as a security, the agency said Kardashian needed to detail what she was paid to ensure potential investors weren’t led astray.

“ARE YOU GUYS INTO CRYPTO????” she wrote in that post, including a link to EthereumMax’s website, which offered instructions for how to buy the token, the SEC said. “THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE BUT SHARING WHAT MY FRIENDS JUST TOLD ME ABOUT THE ETHEREUM MAX TOKEN!”

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