SEC Enters Default Judgment Against NanoBit, Orders $5M in Fines and Disgorgement

Published by James Harris on June 30, 2026June 30, 2026

Federal court in New York has entered a default judgment against six defendants tied to NanoBit, a fictitious cryptocurrency trading platform, ordering fines and disgorgements that together exceed $5 million. The SEC’s case, its first enforcement action explicitly targeting what it calls “relationship investment scams” in crypto markets, wrapped up at the judgment stage on June 16.

The scheme followed a pattern that has become depressingly familiar: fraudsters posed as financial professionals in WhatsApp group chats, built trust over weeks, then directed victims toward a platform that claims to have never executed a single real trade. More than $2 million was wired overseas, with additional crypto assets transferred directly to bank accounts in Hong Kong. NanoBit went further than most pig-butchering operations by falsely claiming its affiliate, NanobitUS Securities, was a registered broker-dealer with the SEC, a detail that likely made the pitch more convincing to investors who thought they were doing their due diligence. The SEC filed a parallel action in September 2024 against CoinW6, a separate platform using the same structural playbook but recruiting victims through Instagram and LinkedIn instead.

Default judgments, by definition, mean the defendants did not contest the case, which says something about the recovery prospects for the $2 million-plus that left the country.

The financial breakdown across six defendants is notable for how it distributes liability. NanoBit Limited carries the largest single burden: roughly $532,000 in disgorgement, $82,000 in prejudgment interest, and a $1.18 million civil penalty. Three other entities, Zhao Deli, Sweet Karma, and Radiant Horizons, each received identical $1.18 million penalties. Two individuals, Jiajie Liu and Hua Zhao, face smaller but still binding orders combining disgorgement, interest, and fines. All six are permanently barred from future violations of the antifraud provisions under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The broader implication is regulatory rather than market-structural. The SEC’s decision to categorize these as “relationship investment scams” and bring two coordinated actions in the same month signals that this fraud typology now has a named enforcement lane, which typically precedes more volume. Retail investors remain the primary target demographic for these schemes, and the current cycle’s price appreciation makes recruitment easier: a rising market gives fraudsters a plausible backdrop for promises of outsized returns. The SEC’s Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit handled this case, a unit that has been expanding its crypto enforcement capacity since 2023.

The SEC’s Office of Investor Education has directed investors to verify credentials through Investor.gov and to treat investment information sourced from social media group chats as presumptively unreliable, a modest but pointed advisory given how central those channels are to how these schemes recruit.