SEC urges Oro to regulate seminars on cryptocurrencies

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Northern Mindanao is calling on the city government to regulate groups conducting seminars and lectures on cryptocurrencies and foreign exchange trading as this might be used by scammers as recruitment ground.

SEC-Northern Mindanao regional director lawyer Renato Egypto has sounded alarm bells after observing that seminars on investments are conducted too often by some groups claiming to be “experts” on these kind of investment schemes.

Egypto said the deception usually start in these seminars with the scammers posing as experts and newly minted millionaires.

“They usually show off they have acquired cars, houses due to the investment to show their recruit that they are legitimate. They conduct their seminars in malls and even in hotels, and their brochures or information materials are all glossy that you can’t tell it is a scam, it’s part of the marketing strategy,” he said.

Egypto said they proposed to Councilor George Goking’s committee on trade and commerce to regulate these suspicious seminars by creating a task force composed of national government agencies and law enforcement agencies too.

He said the target is for the task force to require these groups to get clearance first at the task force to check the group’s background before they can proceed with the seminar.

He said the clearance should enable the government to filter which groups are fake and which group is legitimate and registered before the SEC.

Hotels will also be notified of the unscrupulous groups and shall require the said clearance before accepting reservations or bookings.

Egypto said the regulation shall also stipulate that a representative from the SEC should be allowed to at least talk during the seminar to warn them of the investment scams.

“In Davao, naa silay (they have) task force to combat this, adtuon gyud nila bsan storya lang (they will really check even if it’s just small reports) and no official complaint yet. This is a good practice compared to letting these people get away just because we have no evidence,” he said.

“What we aim is for the public to be educated on this matter before they can actually start investing, before it’s too late,” Egypto added.

The recent investment group in Cagayan de Oro which SEC alleged was an investment scam was Mark Freeman’s group.

But as of today, the group continue their operations despite the a red flag advisory of the SEC that Freeman’s group had no right to solicit investments.

“In a way dili airtight ang balaod (the law is not airtight), because when an investment scam internetbased its very hard to go after them especially that the ones who are often dealing with this are millenials, and they are so tech-savvy. But the more that we accept this challenge to be one step ahead of this group and protect the public before it’s too late,” he said.