Edit: Crowd Machine (CMCT) — CryptoScamsWiki

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## Summary

Crowd Machine, founded by Australian Craig Sproule (with his company Metavine), ran an initial coin offering of "Crowd Machine Compute Tokens" (CMCT) between January and April 2018, raising about $33 million (Sproule claimed $40.7M). Investors were told the funds would build technology to run app-development software on a decentralized network of users' computers. [1][2]

## The fraud

Per the SEC's January 2022 complaint (its first ICO-fraud charge of that year), Sproule instead diverted more than $5.8 million of ICO proceeds to gold-mining entities in South Africa — a use never disclosed to investors — and made materially false statements. [1][2]

## Outcome

Sproule and the companies consented to antifraud/registration judgments (Jan 2022): Sproule paid a $195,047 penalty, was barred from serving as a public-company officer/director, and the tokens were to be disabled. In January 2024 a court ordered Crowd Machine/Metavine to disgorge ~$19.7M plus ~$3.4M interest and $600K penalties each. [1][2]

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