The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged the team behind Coindeal, a $45 million fraudulent crypto investment scheme. The regulator explained that the defendants falsely claimed that Coindeal “would generate investment returns of more than 500,000 times for investors.”

The SEC explained that creator Neil Chandran and promoters Garry Davidson, Michael Glaspie, Amy Mossel, and Linda Knott “falsely claimed that investors could generate extravagant returns by investing in a blockchain technology called Coindeal that would be sold for trillions of dollars to a group of prominent and wealthy buyers.”

However, the regulator said no Coindeal sale ever occurred and no distributions were made to investors. The defendants “collectively misappropriated millions of dollars of investor funds for personal use, and Chandran used investor funds to purchase items such as cars, real estate, and a boat,” the SEC wrote.