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LA-Based Crypto CEO Pleads Guilty to $21M Fraud
Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
In a 2018 initial offering of his company’s BAR cryptocurrency, Titanium Blockchain CEO Michael Alan Stollery managed to raise $21 million—a successful launch by any measure. On Monday, the 54-year-old Reseda resident pleaded guilty to a single count of securities fraud in the U.S. District Court in L.A. Stollery could face decades in prison.
According to the Dept. of Justice (DOJ), Stollery, A.K.A. Michael Stollaire, bamboozled investors into buying Titanium’s BAR cryptocurrency with “false and misleading statements,” in addition to not registering BAR with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Stollery admitted that in efforts to “entice investors, he falsified aspects of TBIS’s white papers, which purportedly offered investors and prospective investors an explanation of the cryptocurrency investment offering,” according to the DOJ.
The faked white papers were just one element of a fairly complex scheme. Stollery used “fake client testimonials” and made false claims of having “business relationships with the Federal Reserve and dozens of prominent companies to create the false appearance of legitimacy,” the DOJ said. Stollery even copped to using investor money for personal expenses, including credit card payments and paying bills for his condo in Hawaii.
The SEC first stopped Titanium Blockchain's initial coin offering—or ICO—with an emergency order in 2018, which froze the firm’s assets and placed them into receivership. The SEC alleged at the time that, in addition to everything else, Stollery was untruthful about his relationships with the Federal Reserve and big-name companies, including PayPal, Verizon, Boeing and Disney.
Stollery’s attorney Andrew Holmes told the Wall Street Journal that his client had legitimate intentions in launching his business but succumbed to “overexuberance that went beyond what he should’ve done.” Holmes said Stollery was “very remorseful and he wants to get as much money as possible back to those that put their money in.”
Andrew Holmes did not immediately respond to dot.LA’s request for further comment about the case.
Fraud is an ongoing problem in cryptocurrency and NFTs and governments worldwide are working to keep up with policing what is essentially a kind of digital Wild West. According to the FTC, investors lost $1 billion to common scams like “rug pulls”—heavily promoting tokens to drive up their price before selling, taking all the invested fiat currency in the process—between 2021 and the first half of 2022 alone.
Stollery is scheduled for sentencing on November 18. He could face up to 20 years in prison.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
This Week in ‘Raises’: Swell Energy Lands $120M, Modyfi Draws in $8M
07:30 AM | November 25, 2022
This Week in ‘Raises’:
As funding in Los Angeles continues to slow down, Swell Energy still managed to raise fresh funding to accelerate the company's mission to deploy 26,000 energy storage systems in homes and businesses across the United States.
Venture Capital
Swell Energy, a Santa Monica-based energy management and smart grid solutions provider, raised a $120 million Series B funding round co-led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund I, LP.
Los Angeles-based image editing tool platform Modyfi raised $8 million in funding, per an SEC filing.
Funds
Per an SEC filing, Beverly Hills-based venture capital and private equity firm Muse Capital raised $6 million in funding.
Smash Ventures, a Los Angeles-based venture capital and private equity firm raised $5 million in funding, per an SEC filing.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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