The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two Colorado-incorporated companies, BG Wealth Sharing Ltd and DSJ Exchange Pty Ltd, with running a fraud that it says raised more than $130 million from tens of thousands of retail investors. The SEC announced the case on 29 October and says both firms were operated from abroad.
The core allegation is unusual: the SEC says the pair used the agency’s own public filing system to look legitimate. Everything below comes from the SEC’s complaint and press release. These are allegations; no court has ruled on them.
What the SEC alleges
According to the complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, the scheme ran from at least October 2025 to June 2026. Investors were invited into a “wealth-sharing program” that promised extraordinary, risk-free returns from crypto trading “signals” said to be produced by “Super Intelligence”.
BG Wealth told investors it was the world’s largest hedge fund and an SEC-licensed investment adviser, the complaint says. It allegedly promised returns of at least 60% a month, said investors could double their money in 40 days and called the investment “zero risk”. The signals were credited to a founder presented as “Professor” Stephen Beard and were claimed to be 99.6% accurate. DSJ Exchange, the complaint says, posed as a licensed and secure crypto trading platform that carried out the trades and showed the profits.
“None of that was true,” the SEC says. According to the complaint, no trading took place. DSJ Exchange displayed made-up transactions and balances, while the defendants moved investors’ crypto across blockchains and through intermediaries. No more than $25 million went back to wallets likely linked to investors, in what the SEC calls Ponzi-like payments. The rest was misappropriated, it alleges. Between March and June 2026 alone, the complaint says, the defendants took in more than $130 million from over 223,000 blockchain addresses, and investors lost more than $100 million in total.
Sham filings as a sales tool
The SEC says BG Wealth filed a Form ADV claiming to be an exempt reporting adviser, and DSJ Exchange filed a Form D announcing a supposed $100 million securities offering. Both forms were publicly viewable on the SEC’s website. The defendants then showed them to investors, alongside fabricated registration certificates bearing the SEC’s seal, as proof that the regulator had licensed or approved them. It had not.
“This alleged scheme was well-planned, as evidenced by how many different communications channels the defendants chose to broadcast to their target audiences,” said Laura D’Allaird, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit. She said the defendants “sustained the ruse by displaying fake certificates with the SEC’s seal and making periodic payments to certain investors – a Ponzi-like tactic – while misappropriating the remaining funds”.
Both forms have now been removed from the SEC website. The agency says it has issued investor alerts warning that scammers are using exempt reporting adviser filings to create a false impression of legitimacy.
Promoters, roadshows and blocked withdrawals
The complaint describes a multi-level marketing structure. Investors were urged to “Level Up” by recruiting at least five others, climbing as many as 12 levels for bonuses and commissions. One promoter with an office in Concord, California, reached Level 7 with about 5,000 investors below them, the SEC says. Promoters ran roadshows in Las Vegas, Lā’ie in Hawaii and Salt Lake City, and the scheme used YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, weekly Zoom calls and an encrypted messaging app.
Withdrawals were allowed at first, the complaint says, but with fees of up to 20% and delays of several days. On 23 April 2026, the FBI seized BG Wealth’s original website domain in a joint law-enforcement operation. The SEC says the company blamed a “Chinese hack”. DSJ Exchange later blocked withdrawals altogether, and investors were told to pay a “tax” to unlock their accounts and to deposit more to move to a new platform, HQI Exchange. Those who paid still could not withdraw, the complaint alleges.
The SEC charges both firms under the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, and BG Wealth under the Investment Advisers Act. It seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement with interest and civil penalties. Regulators in Alberta, Hawaii, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin assisted.
Why a public SEC filing is not a seal of approval
This is TSN’s analysis. The most important detail in this case is not the size of the alleged losses but the method. Forms ADV and D are notices that the filers submit themselves, as the complaint shows. Their appearance on the SEC’s website shows that a form was filed, not that the regulator checked or endorsed it. The SEC’s complaint describes those notices being turned into marketing material, and the agency’s own investor alerts suggest this case is not the only one.
That makes the case a warning about how trust signals travel. A link to sec.gov looks authoritative to someone who has never filed anything with a regulator, and the alleged scheme paired it with familiar features of crypto investment frauds: AI branding, guaranteed returns, recruitment rewards and early payouts to build confidence. TSN has covered another promoter-driven crypto scheme in the NovaTech case pursued by New York’s attorney general.
The harder question is recovery. The SEC says the scheme was run from abroad, and the complaint names no individual defendants. Seizures and restraints, such as those in recent US charges over a Madagascar-based NFT scam and the work of the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force, show that money can sometimes be traced. Investors in this case will be watching whether any can be.
The SEC advises investors to check anyone selling them an investment on Investor.gov. The defendants now have the chance to answer the complaint in court; no hearing date appears in the filings published so far.
Sources
- US Securities and Exchange Commission, “Two Entities Charged in $130 Million Fraud Scheme That Used False SEC Filings to Boost Investor Confidence”, press release 2026-110, 29 October 2026
- SEC v. BG Wealth Sharing Ltd and DSJ Exchange Pty Ltd, complaint, US District Court for the Northern District of California, Case 3:26-cv-12746, filed 29 October 2026 (PDF)
Related
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- US Charges Six Over Madagascar NFT Scam as Crypto Restraints Top $1bn
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Related stories
- New York Secures Nearly $6m From NovaTech Scam Promoters
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- DOJ Unit Lists $938m in Scam Crypto Restrained as Trump Touts ‘Nearly $1B’
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