According to documents dated for Monday this week (June 10th), a former employee of Merril Lynch was fined by the United States FINRA (United States Regulatory Authority). The document has already been confirmed as authentic and fines the individual $5,000 for not reporting his activities of mining cryptocurrencies within the jurisdiction of the USA.
FINRA was first informed about the mining activities once it checked the letter of acceptance, waiver, and consent that the employee had submitted beforehand. According to the regulator, the individual, Kyung Soo Kim, failed to comply with national standards, which led to further investigations.
In order to have avoided the fine, Kim had to notify FINRA about his activities on a separate venture for mining cryptocurrencies while being employed in Merrill Lynch during his employment in 2017. In fact, the mining activities were the cause of Kim’s dismissal from his position in 2018.
Due to the violation, Kim will also receive a ban from any FINRA-related company for a one-month period on top of his $5,000 fine. Many would say that this was quite a light punishment.
This is definitely not an SEC-scale violation of crypto regulations in the United States, but it does send a message to the local crypto community, that no matter how one may think they’re too small to be bothered with, they’d be finding themselves wrong after facing the same consequences.
It’s not clear whether FINRA will continue its hunt for violators, but similar cases may start popping out in the future.
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