Runcorn & Widnes Weekly News

Cryptocurr­ency scam alleged by investors

-

A BUSINESSMA­N who was briefly connected to a doomed Runcorn flats project has been accused of fraud in a class action being brought by cryptocurr­ency investors.

They are suing Delaware-based Monkey Capital, whose owner Daniel Harrison took on the project management role for the East Lane House conversion scheme in 2015 as part of a takeover of Absolute Living Developmen­ts.

Attorneys at Silver Miller Law in Florida have alleged that investors pumped $5m of Bitcoin into Daniel Harrison’s ‘Coeval’ cryptocurr­ency options that could be converted into ‘Monkey Coin’ once an ‘initial coin offering’ (ICO) took place.

Papers filed by the firm said the Bitcoins invested would now be worth more than $15m had the plaintiffs kept hold of them.

However, the ICO that had been scheduled for July last year never took place, the plaintiffs have claimed.

According to the court papers, the supposed values of the Coevals and Monkey Coins derived from their popularity on the ‘Monkey Capital Exchange’, controlled by Mr Harrison.

It is alleged that investors were told that the Coeval and Monkey Coins’ worth would ‘skyrocket’ once the Monkey Capital Exchange was launched.

According to the cryptocurr­encies trade news website, Mr Harrison has branded the allegation­s ‘ridiculous’ and warned that the claimants will ‘regret’ their course of action.

Readers may be familiar with Mr Harrison from late 2015 when his firm Harrison Homes took on the developmen­t of East Lane House from Absolute Living Developmen­ts and rebranded it as The Whitehouse.

Absolute Living Developmen­ts (ALD) was slapped with allegation­s of fraud and of duping investors out of cash in the Far East for flats that were never built.

The firm is now undergoing winding up proceeding­s that have included injunction­s against directors at companies with links to ALD projects.

Although Mr Harrison was registered as a director of Absolute Living Developmen­ts according to Government business listings website Companies House, but he denied ever doing this and alleged that his name had been fraudulent­ly registered by a third party.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom