Crypto Billionaire Justin Sun Receives Reprieve From SEC on Fraud Charges

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is pausing its civil case against Justin Sun, the billionaire founder of Tron ( TRX ).

According to recent court filings , Sun and the regulatory agency jointly asked a federal judge if they could “move to stay [the] case to allow the parties to explore a potential resolution.”

Says the request,

“In this case, the parties submit that it is in each of their interest to stay this matter while they consider a potential resolution and agree that no party or non-party would be prejudiced by a stay.

Further, a stay is in the Court’s and the public’s best interest because a resolution would converse judicial resources by obviating the need for the Court to resolve the Defendants’ pending motion to dismiss the complaint. A proposed stay interferes with no current Court-issued deadlines.”

United States District Judge Edgardo Ramos granted the application a day later, according to the documents.

In 2023, Sun – who went on to invest millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial – and his crypto firms were accused of fraud, selling unregistered securities and manipulating the price of the digital asset TRX via wash trading.

Last April, the Tron Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying that the SEC does not have jurisdiction to regulate foreign trades and investments.

As stated in the motion by the attorneys representing Tron at the time,

“The SEC is not a worldwide regulator. Its efforts to leverage highly attenuated contacts to the United States, to extend US securities laws to cover predominantly foreign conduct, go too far and should be rejected.”

The SEC recently also dropped other high-profile cases against crypto firms, including MetaMask developer Consensys and the top US-based crypto exchange Coinbase .

Generated Image: Midjourney