SEC-PR-2024-94 (Aug. 9, 2024)
SEC Charges Ideanomics and Three Senior Executives with Accounting and Disclosure Fraud
Washington D.C., Aug. 9, 2024 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled fraud charges against Ideanomics, Inc., formerly known as Seven Stars Cloud Group, Inc., and its former Chairman and CEO, Zheng (Bruno) Wu, for misleading the public about the company’s financial performance between 2017 and 2019. The SEC also announced settled charges against Ideanomics’ current CEO, Alfred Poor, and former CFO, Federico Tovar, for their roles in the scheme.
The SEC’s orders allege that, in mid-November 2017, Ideanomics and Wu reported 2017 revenue guidance of $300 million, despite numerous known issues indicating that the company would miss this guidance by a wide margin. The company later reported only $144 million in 2017 revenues. Ideanomics and Wu also misled the company’s auditor with a fraudulent letter of intent from a purportedly interested buyer of certain assets to avoid writing down those assets by $17 million in 2017, and Wu improperly hid his personal interest in two companies that received millions in cash and stock from deals with Ideanomics between 2017 and 2019, according to the orders. The SEC further alleged that Ideanomics, Wu, Poor, and Tovar improperly accounted for a deal involving crypto assets in 2019, resulting in the company’s overstatement of revenues by more than $40 million, and made false representations in company financial statements.
Date: Aug. 9, 2024
Accessed: Sep. 19, 2024
Source URL: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-94
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