Madison Cawthorn reaped profits with crypto 'pump and dump' scheme, filing shows

[brooklynite]

Washington Examiner

Outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) revealed Friday he sold upward of $250,000 of the Let's Go Brandon meme cryptocurrency on Dec. 31, 2021, the day it saw its market value peak. Less than a month later, the meme coin had lost 100% of its value.

Multiple watchdogs told the Washington Examiner that the filing bolsters their suspicions that Cawthorn engaged in an insider trading scheme with the meme coin, whose leaders face a class-action lawsuit for allegedly scamming retail traders by orchestrating a "pump and dump" scheme with the coin.

"It's very damning," said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with Public Citizen. "The timing is spot on for what suggests to be insider trading. He buys the stock, it increases dramatically in value, and he sells it at the peak moment. That's what appeared to be what was going on in the first place, and this really confirms it."

The Washington Examiner reported Cawthorn may have implicated himself in an insider trading scheme when he posed with LGB coin ringleader James Koutoulas at a party on Dec. 29. Cawthorn posted on Instagram that evening in response to the photo: "LGB legends. ... Tomorrow we go to the moon!"

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Who to root for?

I'm rooting for a mutual TKO.

[Blue Owl]

2. Now all he's got is a bump and tRump

[TlalocW]

3. This is more proof of a phenomenon I only see on the right

Conservative A is at a certain point on the political spectrum. He sees Conservative B who is further to the right of him. For the most part they agree on everything, but A also knows what triggers B. A may not believe in it or doesn't look at it as crazily as B does so A comes up with a "product" to sell to B. So you get evangelists claiming healing power or the ones who aren't good actors selling buckets of food to survivalists or COVID and other illness panaceas, and of course, crypto-scams. I have a very hard time that any of the As out there actually believe that their products will help, but hey, as Barnum never said, "There's a sucker born every minute." If A doesn't take advantage of B, some other A will.

It's not something I see on the left. Not that there isn't bullcrap on the left, but the As tend to use and believe in whatever they're selling.

TlalocW

[Initech]

4. I could smell that LGB bitcoin was a scam from a mile away.

Meme coins are the 21st century equivalent of fool's good, so I'm not in any way, shape, or form shocked by this.