Pryor Cashman Partner Jeffrey Alberts, who co-heads the White Collar Defense + Investigations, Financial Institutions, and FinTech Practices, was quoted in All Rise, a newsletter from Best Lawyers, about the efficacy of penalties levied by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for instances of Bitcoin-related fraud.

In “Landmark Civil and Bitcoin-Related Penalties Preview the Future of Securities Law,” Jeff comments on the $3.4 billion fraud penalty the CFTC has assessed against Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, founder and CEO of Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited:

Jeffrey Alberts, the Co-Head of Financial Institutions and Head of White-Collar Defense at Pryor Cashman, said the primary deterrent effect is not the size of the penalty but rather the increased likelihood that the penalty will be enforced.

“To the extent that bad actors proceed on the assumption that they will be able to evade penalties imposed by agencies with limited resources to enforce judgments internationally, such as the South African Financial Sector Conduct Authority or the Financial Services Commission of Belize, intervention by the CFTC could deter these bad actors,” Alberts said. “The increasingly aggressive enforcement activity of U.S. regulators has resulted in an increased demand for attorneys with experience in both financial regulations and civil and criminal enforcement.”

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