Five More SEC Attorneys Confront Bar Complaints Tied to Jorge Tenreiro Controversy:

Veritaseum’s Motion to Vacate Set to Surpass Debtbox, Exposing Stunning SEC Misconduct Under Berger’s Watch

The recent demotion of Jorge Tenreiro from Chief Litigation Counsel to the IT Department, following 180+ Bar Complaints lodged with the New York Attorney Grievance Committee (AGC) by the VERI Community in October 2024, has triggered a wave of additional scrutiny. On April 7, 2025, five further complaints were filed against SEC lawyers implicated in what is alleged to be a fabricated case targeting DeFi founder Reggie Middleton (US11196566) and his companies, collectively known as Veritaseum.

The additional bar complaints were filed against;

• Marc P. Berger Complaint, Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office. Left the SEC in 2021, to become a Partner at Latham & Watkins LLP

• Lara Shalov Mehraban Complaint, Associate Regional Director of the SEC's New York Regional Office. Left after 15 years at the SEC becoming a Partner at Sidley Austin LLP

• Victor Suthammanont Complaint, SEC Lead Attorney. Left the SEC in Dec 2024 to become Partner at Kostelanetz LLP

• Karen Willenken Complaint, SEC General Counsel

• John O. Enright Complaint, Cyber Unit, SEC General Counsel

On March 13, 2025 a letter from Middleton's attorney highlighted a discussion with counsel for the SEC in which they stipulated a stay in the 'Consolidated Final Accounting Report, Discharging the Distribution Agent, Terminating the Fair Fund and Related Relief' pending the outcome to a Motion to Vacate alleging Fraud Upon the Court per Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 60(d)(3).

A year earlier, in March of 2024, sanctions were placed on the SEC for "Abuse of Power" for deceiving the court in the Debtbox case, provoking a scathing letter to Gary Gensler signed by Senators J.D. Vance, Thom Tillis, Bill Hagerty, Katie Boyd Britt, and Cynthia Lummis which stated...

“It is difficult to maintain confidence that other cases are not predicated upon dubious evidence, obfuscations, or outright misrepresentations”.

This is such a case, to the nth degree, and to the detriment of America’s position in the race to maintain its lead in the global economy. A Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) was issued using questionable evidence and misrepresentations to freeze funds essential in mounting a defense, forcing a consent judgement where Middleton 'neither admitted or denied' the allegations against him.

The claims made against Middleton were rebutted in his 423 page reply to the TRO filed on August 19, 2019. This reply supported by almost 400 pages of evidence was seemingly ignored by Tenreiro, Suthammanont and Willenken in issuing the Memorandum in Support of its Application for Preliminary Injunction Freezing Assets on August 22, 2019, a mere 3 days later, claiming none of the charges were rebutted. (Section III. Page 12. Defendants Have Not Rebutted the Evidence of Their Fraud, Manipulation, and Unregistered Offerings)

The Memorandum in Support also failed to correct the record after expert witness Patrick Doody corrected his earlier declaration, which originally suggested dissipation of assets through a personal Kraken account to “I understand now that the account is titled in the name of Veritaseum LLC”, found on the last page of his 2nd declaration also filed on August 22, 2025

“After learning about Middleton’s transfer of funds, we took quick action to prevent the further dissipation of investor assets,” said Marc P. Berger, Director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office in the SEC's August 13, 2019 Press Release

The Commission’s investigation and litigation was led by Jorge G. Tenreiro and Victor Suthammanont of the New York Regional Office, assisted by Roseann Daniello, a staff accountant in the New York Regional Office, John O. Enright of the Cyber Unit, and IT Forensics staff Ken Zavos and Olga Cruz-Ortiz. The case being supervised by Marc Berger, Lara Shalov Mehraban, and John Enright with litigation conducted by Jorge G. Tenreiro, Victor Suthammanont, and Karen Willenken of the New York Regional Office.

The Smoking Guns: Fraud on the Court Allegations Against the SEC

1 - Falsely Claimed Patents were "not novel", "stalled" and would never be granted, claiming Reggie "misled investors about the status of Veritaseum’s IP". A total of 7 patents have since been granted with 3 in the US (US11196566B2, US11895246B2, US12231579) and 4 in Japan (JP6813477B2, JP7204231B2, JP7533974B2, JP7533983B2). These patents titled ‘Devices, systems, and methods for facilitating low trust and zero trust value transfers’ are foundational to DeFi, Tokenized Assets, NFT's, Stablecoins, Proof of Stake and Proof of Work.

Coinbase filed an IPR2023-00751 in an attempt in invalidate these patents. The USPTO upheld the patents denying the IPR challenge and rejected an appeal based on "lack of merit", further strengthening the validity of the patents.

2 - VeADIR Platform Operability & Functionality - a live demonstration was given before SEC staff at their offices on March 9, 2018 and days later Reggie was told to shut it down, Tenreiro then claimed the platform was neither operational nor functional. VeTest Channel on YouTube has videos that prove the functionality but as shown in his affidavit, the owner was threatened by Tenreiro "...the line of questioning quickly turned aggressive, abusive and threatening" and told to cease making videos "...through threats of multiple felony charges against me for supporting Mr. Middleton, testing his software and publicizing the results through my YouTube Channel".

3 - Misrepresented Ownership of Kraken Corporate Account as Personal - Despite having served subpoenas on Kraken, Jorge Tenreiro misrepresented that the Kraken account belonged to Middleton personally and further failed to correct the record after expert witness Patrick Doody corrected his earlier declaration "I understand now that the account is titled in the name of Veritaseum LLC", found on the last page of his 2nd declaration. Also detailed on page 20 of the SEC RICO Dossier

Kraken is not licensed to do business in NY making it impossible for Reggie Middleton; a NY resident to have a personal Kraken account, as found on Kraken’s Support page under Geographic Restrictions. An obvious oversight!

4 - Misrepresentation of Asset Flow - falsely alleged vast sums of money were flowing into Middleton’s personal account, misleading the court about asset misappropriation of funds. This point becomes moot as the account is proven to be a Corporate account as evidenced in point #3 and also in a 423 page reply to the TRO.

5 - False Allegation Regarding Agreements - alleging the defendants were merely negotiating deals with the Jamaican Stock Exchange (Memorandum of Understanding) and Nigerian Stock Exchange (Joint Venture Agreement), when signed agreements were already in place. The SEC's aggressive and actions caused the cancellations of these agreements. Numerous FOIA requests have been submitted seeking communications between the SEC and the JSE, yielding little response.

6 - Misrepresenting Trading Activity on Etherdelta - as secretive manipulation when, in fact, it was publicly announced prior as a liquidity and functionality test of the new decentralized platform, also found on page 49 Veritaseum's reply to the TRO “Testing EtherDelta as a method of distributing post-Offering Veritas tokens. Anyone interested in buy VERI please visit https://etherdelta.github.io and let me know”

7 - Misrepresentation of CEO Payments - falsely misrepresented that $1.7 million in periodic payments to Middleton over 27 months (about 2 and a half years), was dissipation of assets, misleading the court about CEO compensation. this is detailed on page 55 of the SEC RICO Dossier

8 - Nature of International Payments - The SEC's TRO action misrepresented payments to overseas contractors as asset dissipation. Daneillo would later correct her findings to show they were in fact payments to overseas contractors. Nonetheless, the SEC continued to press ahead with their false narrative that the payments were part of an effort to hide assets outside US jurisdiction to thwart judgment relief, which is clearly a disingenuous characterization (SEC Memo of Law in Further Support of TRO).

9 - Unethical Conduct in No-Action Letter Request - Involved himself unethically in a No Action Letter (NAL) request meeting, breaching the SEC’s ethical separation as found in the Bar Complaint against Jorge Tenreiro.

10 - Harassment of VERI Token Holders - aggressively pursued VERI token holders to coerce them into giving evidence against Middleton, despite them stating they were not victims of Fraud. Victims of harassment have either come forth with notarized affidavits (Lloyd Cupp, John Doe) explicitly describing the SEC’s coercive actions, and have expressed fears of retaliation due to their treatment after interaction with Mr. Tenreiro and Mr. Suthammanont.

Learn more about this modern day David vs Goliath story here…

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