Justin Sun once garnered attention for paying millions to have lunch with Warren Buffett.
Photo: Edwin Koo/Bloomberg News
SINGAPORE—Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who grabbed headlines for once paying millions to have lunch with Warren Buffett, is getting attention again—only this time for allegedly breaking U.S. securities laws.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday said it filed civil charges against Mr. Sun and three of his companies in a Manhattan federal court for offering and selling two unregistered crypto tokens, Tronix, or TRX, and BitTorrent, or BTT. The regulator also alleged that they manipulated the prices of TRX between April 2018 and February 2019.
The SEC’s complaint “lacks merit,” Mr. Sun tweeted on Thursday morning. The 32-year-old added that the accusations were only the latest example of action the regulator has taken against “well-known players in the blockchain and crypto space.” When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Huobi, a company where Mr. Sun is an adviser, referred The Wall Street Journal to Mr. Sun’s tweet.
The SEC also brought civil charges against eight celebrities, including “Mean Girls” star Lindsay Lohan. In court documents, the SEC alleged the eight—who each had more than a million social media followers at the time—illegally promoted TRX and BTT. Ms. Lohan was paid $10,000 to tweet about TRX, according to a settlement agreement published by the SEC. Ms. Lohan and five other celebrities agreed to pay a total of $400,000 to settle the investigation.
But who is Mr. Sun?
Mr. Sun is a Chinese national who studied at Beijing’s Peking University before getting a master’s from the University of Pennsylvania, the SEC said. He is an adviser to Huobi, which was once one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. He also founded blockchain company Tron, which is one of the defendants in the SEC’s lawsuit.
The SEC filing said Mr. Sun is Grenada’s permanent representative to the World Trade Organization. He often uses the title “His Excellency”—abbreviated to H.E.—when referring to himself, according to current and former employees at Huobi. He also uses the title in his Twitter profile.
In 2019, Mr. Sun famously paid $4.6 million in an auction to secure a lunch date with legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a prominent skeptic of cryptocurrencies. The crypto promoter said he hoped to discuss cryptocurrencies and blockchain with Mr. Buffett.
A month later, Mr. Sun said that he had to postpone the lunch. A foundation affiliated with Tron said this was because Mr. Sun had fallen ill with kidney stones.
Late last year, Mr. Sun said that he was looking to scoop up some assets of collapsed crypto platform FTX, and that Tron and Huobi representatives were in the Bahamas for discussions. FTX managers are now taking the dispute over who should control and distribute the imploded exchange’s assets to court.
Mr. Sun has even waded into the recent banking turmoil. On Sunday, as Switzerland’s UBS Group AG was in the middle of talks to buy rival Credit Suisse Group AG , Mr. Sun offered $1.5 billion to buy the bank. UBS later struck a deal to buy Credit Suisse for more than $3 billion.
“By integrating Credit Suisse into a crypto-friendly financial institution, we can pave the way for a more innovative and decentralized financial system,” he said.
Credit Suisse didn’t publicly respond to the offer.
Write to Weilun Soon at weilun.soon@wsj.com
Source: wsj.com