SEC Wins $5.5 Million Default Judgment in NanoBit Crypto Fraud Case
A federal judge in New York has delivered a decisive win in the SEC’s ongoing crypto fraud crackdown, ordering NanoBit Limited and five related defendants to pay $5,518,902 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties over a fake crypto trading platform used to deceive investors out of nearly $1 million.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York entered the default judgment on June 16, following an SEC announcement detailing how the scheme operated. According to the agency, participants posed as financial professionals inside WhatsApp groups between September 2023 and June 2024, slowly building trust with victims before steering them toward depositing funds into NanoBit.
The platform showed users dashboards displaying what looked like profitable trades, but the SEC says none of those trades were real. Instead, investor money was funneled into bank accounts in Hong Kong, with more than $2 million wired offshore and hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto assets misappropriated outright. NanoBit also falsely claimed a supposed affiliate, NanobitUS Securities, was SEC-registered and connected to legitimate financial firms — a detail that likely deepened victims’ false sense of security.
This SEC crypto fraud crackdown targeted six defendants in total: NanoBit Limited, Radiant Horizons Limited, Sweet Karma Fashion Inc., Zhao Tropical Deli Inc., Jiajie Liu, and Hua Zhao. None of them appeared in court to contest the charges, and the judge ruled their default was willful, with no meritorious defense on record.
NanoBit Limited carries the heaviest financial burden, owing over $532,000 in disgorgement, nearly $82,000 in prejudgment interest, and a $1.1 million civil penalty. The three other corporate entities each owe $1.1 million in penalties, while individuals Liu and Zhao owe $120,000 and $55,000 respectively. All payments are due within 30 days.
Beyond the financial penalties, the court has permanently barred all six from violating federal anti-fraud rules and from participating in any securities offerings or transactions going forward, though Liu and Zhao retain the right to trade in their own personal accounts.
The case traces back to a September 2024 complaint, filed alongside a parallel action against another alleged fake platform, CoinW6, marking some of the SEC’s earliest enforcement moves against so-called “pig-butchering” scams that exploit personal relationships to lure crypto investors. A seventh individual named in the original complaint, Fei Liao, was not part of this judgment.
