BG Wealth: The SEC Says a $130M Crypto Scheme Passed Off Its Own Filings as a Licence

Twice a day, a man calling himself "Professor" Stephen Beard sent a string of letters and numbers through BonChat, a messaging app based in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of people copied that code into an app run by DSJ Exchange and pressed "confirm". Each time, the app showed a trade and a profit. Balances roughly doubled every 40 days.

On 29 October 2026 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal regulator of the stock market and investment advisers, sued the two companies behind the programme in federal court in San Francisco. Its complaint says none of the trades happened. "The entire program was a fiction," it reads.

The case is SEC v. BG Wealth Sharing Ltd and DSJ Exchange Pty Ltd, No. 3:26-cv-12746, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The SEC says the companies took in more than $130 million between March and mid-June 2026 alone, from more than 223,000 crypto wallet addresses belonging to investors in over 40 US states, several US territories and abroad. It puts investor losses above $100 million. No more than $25 million went back to wallets likely belonging to investors, which the SEC calls "Ponzi-like payments": early investors paid with later investors' money. These are the SEC's allegations. No court has ruled on them.

The pitch

BG Wealth told investors it was the "world's largest hedge fund", an investment adviser licensed by the SEC, and part of a financial group Beard had founded in 2018 "on behalf of" the International Monetary Fund, according to the complaint. Its websites promised returns of "at least 60%" a month, said investors could "double [their] principal within 40 days" and called the arrangement "zero-risk". It said Beard's trading signals, built with artificial intelligence, were 99.6% accurate, and that a £30 million fund stood ready to cover any losses. The complaint calls the technology "SI", for Super Intelligence, because a US executive order of 29 September 2026 tells federal agencies to use that term instead of AI. BG Wealth's own marketing said AI.

Investors could take part only through DSJ Exchange, which BG Wealth described as an SEC-licensed trading platform and "one of the top 100 exchanges in the world". A crypto exchange works like an online broker. Investors deposited USDC and USDT, two stablecoins (digital tokens meant to stay worth one US dollar each), and ether (ETH), the coin of the Ethereum network. BG Wealth said DSJ would pool 1% of each account with everyone else's money, trade it on the open crypto market, and share the profits. BG Wealth said it would keep 40% of each profit.

The growth came from recruitment, the complaint says. Investors were urged to "Level Up" by signing up at least five people, rising through as many as 12 levels for bonuses, commissions and "transaction volume dividends". One promoter in the Northern District of California, who opened an office in Concord, reached Level 7 with about 5,000 investors below him, the complaint says. Beard appeared on weekly Zoom calls from December 2025, and promoters held roadshows in Las Vegas, Laie in Hawaii, and Salt Lake City, while the programme spread on social media. The Philippines' Securities and Exchange Commission, a separate regulator, said the scheme targeted overseas Filipino workers, with a promise of 1.3% a day, compounded, on a minimum of $500.

A filing is not a licence

The centre of the SEC's case is how the two companies used the SEC itself. On 11 July 2025 DSJ Exchange filed a Form D, claiming over $100 million in revenue and a $100 million private offering. On 16 August 2025 BG Wealth filed a Form ADV as an "exempt reporting adviser". Promoters then sent investors to the SEC's public websites, EDGAR and the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site, to look the companies up as proof that they were "registered".

Neither filing proves that. A Form D is a short notice a company types in itself when it raises money privately. It lands on EDGAR without any SEC review, much as anyone can post a notice on a public noticeboard. Form ADV is the disclosure form investment advisers file, and fully registered advisers use it too. But an exempt reporting adviser is, by definition, an adviser that is not registered with the SEC; it files a shorter version and claims an exemption. The complaint states that neither type of filing is a licence or evidence that the SEC approved the filer. Neither company was ever registered.

BG Wealth's website also displayed "SEC registration certificates" for both companies, bearing the SEC's seal, which Beard showed on his video calls. The SEC says it issues no such certificates and that these were fakes. What made them convincing was that each carried a real number: BG Wealth's carried the CRD number from its Form ADV, and DSJ's the CIK number from its EDGAR account, the ID numbers the SEC's systems give every filer. An investor who searched either number found a genuine page on sec.gov.

The filings themselves were false, the SEC says. BG Wealth named an auditor, Indicator Global, that appears in no public register of accounting firms. Its "principal office" in Denver was a PostNet virtual mailbox. Its phone number was disconnected and mail came back undeliverable. DSJ's Colorado address was a temporary rental office, and the notary whose stamp appears on its EDGAR access application did not notarise it. Both are Colorado corporations, formed in April and June 2025, but the SEC believes the scheme was run by people abroad. It also says "Stephen Beard" is probably an assumed identity. Beard is not a defendant.

The method is not new. On 27 August 2026 the SEC filed 38 separate cases in Colorado over false Form ADV filings, and in September it sued two WhatsApp "AI trading" schemes that used Form D notices the same way.

How it ended

At least seven foreign regulators had warned about BG Wealth and DSJ from May 2025, and from March 2026 Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin issued warnings or cease-and-desist orders. The Philippines' SEC issued an advisory on 28 January 2026 and ordered BG Wealth and Beard to stop selling on 20 May. The companies changed web addresses and added a page to BG Wealth's site explaining why the programme was not a Ponzi scheme.

On 23 April 2026 the FBI seized BG Wealth's original website as part of a joint law enforcement operation. Beard told investors a Chinese hacker was to blame. Withdrawals already cost up to 20% in fees and took days; DSJ then blocked them altogether. In a video in early May, Beard said DSJ was close to a stock market listing and that a 12% "tax" on balances was needed first, Cointelegraph reported. Investors who paid the "tax" still could not withdraw, the SEC says, and were then told to deposit more to move to a new platform, HQI Exchange. On 29 September 2026 DSJ renamed itself on EDGAR as Horizon Crest Capital Inc and filed a fresh Form D.

The blockchain investigator ZachXBT reported in May that people tied to the group had tried to launder more than $92 million from 27 April. Working with Tether, the company that issues USDT, the exchanges Binance and OKX, and US law enforcement, he said more than $41.5 million had been frozen. He estimated total losses above $150 million.

What each side says

The SEC charges both companies with fraud under Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and BG Wealth with false statements in an SEC filing and failing to make its records available, under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. It asks for permanent injunctions, disgorgement (handing back the money) with interest from both companies jointly, civil penalties, and a ban on BG Wealth filing Form ADV as an exempt reporting adviser. It has demanded a jury trial.

No response from either company has been reported, and neither could be reached for comment by WealthManagement.com. SEC subpoenas posted to DSJ came back or went unanswered, the complaint says. Their only public account remains their own: the "not a Ponzi" page, the "Chinese hack", the hacked exchange and the coming listing.