The United States Securities and Substitution Committee (SEC) has charged Rivetz over an alleged illegal securities offering that fetched around $18 million.

Rivetz was founded in 2022 and the now-defunct blockchain hardware house has been accused of generating $18 one thousand thousand via an unregistered securities offering betwixt July and September of 2022 from more than 7,200 investors.

The SEC's Wed complaint names defendants Rivetz Corp., founder Steven Sprague and the firm'south subsidiary Rivetz International. The ICO revolved around the RvT token, which the SEC states was promoted and sold as an investment opportunity and used to capitalize on Rivetz's business in building an app, ecosystem and cyber security hardware.

The SEC asserts that the defendants touted the value of RvT tokens as "investments that purchasers could purchase and sell on the secondary market place" despite the product existence "non-operational" at the time of offering:

"Token buyers could not purchase whatever goods and services using RvT tokens, and the tokens had no other use in whatever Rivetz product or service. In fact, several months after the tokens were distributed [...] Sprague stated on social media that Rivetz did not have 'a specific release appointment' for the Rivetz app through which consumers could employ the RvT token."

Investors used Ether (ETH) to purchase the RvT tokens. Following the initial sale, the SEC alleges that Rivetz and Sprague liquidated all of the Ether received via Rivetz International.

The complaint states the money was used to fund operations, give Spraque a $ane million bonus and a separate loan of $two.5 meg, which he used to "buy a house in the Cayman Islands that he then leased back to Rivetz Int'l."

If the defendants are found guilty, the SEC is seeking injunctive relief, the return of what information technology calls "sick-gotten gains," prejudgment interest and a civil penalty.

Related: US SEC releases fresh investor alert against crypto investment scams

Is the SEC on the war path?

The SEC has been making headlines throughout September as the enforcement trunk takes action — or threatens to take action — confronting multiple crypto firms.

On Sept. two, Cointelegraph reported that the SEC charged the notorious Ponzi-scheme BitConnect as an alleged unregistered securities offering that netted $two billion. Reports accept surfaced that the enforcement torso was also investigating decentralized substitution (DEX) Uniswap over its marketing and investor services.

Earlier this week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the SEC was threatening to sue the house if it launched a stablecoin yield program it deems as security.