Texan Charged in first Ponzi case regarding bitcoin securities fraud

On Thursday. a Texas man who operated Bitcoin Savings and Trust was charged with bilking his investors. According to prosecutors, this will be the first federal criminal case for securities fraud that has arisen from a Ponzi scheme related to Bitcoins. Trendon Shavers, 32, from McKinney, Texas, was charged with allegedly misappropriating as much as 146,000 bitcoins out of the 764,000 bitcoins he raised from September 2011 to September 2012 which were then worth over $4.5 million. He did so by promising his investors interest rates which were absurdly high. Bitcoins …