State regulators in Arizona last week hit a former LPL Financial broker under scrutiny for sales of crypto assets to clients with an order to pay defrauded investors $1.4 million in restitution as well as $75,000 in penalties related to the fraud.
The Arizona crypto fraud case has been simmering for some months.
The Securities Division of Arizona in August issued a cease and desist order against the former LPL Financial broker, Lisa Boisselle, and her firm, Wealthwise,, claiming violations of a variety of state securities laws linked to sales of two cryptocurrency funds.
Boisselle was registered with LPL Financial in Scottsdale, Ariz., from 2018 to 2022, according to her BrokerCheck profile. Wealthwise is no longer registered as an RIA.
A call on Tuesday to Wealthwise could not be completed. According to Arizona regulators, Boisselle failed to request a hearing and also failed to file an answer in the crypto matter.
An LPL spokesperson on Tuesday did not immediately return a phone call to comment about Boisselle.
In matters of restitution to clients, customers are often left with little or nothing despite an order from a regulator.
Boisselle was president, owner, and chief compliance officer of Wealthwise, according to a statement last Wednesday by the Arizona Corporate Commission. She solicited clients to invest in two cryptocurrency asset-related programs, NovaTech and HyperFund, which is also known as HyperVerse.
Boisselle solicited close to $1.4 million from at least 16 clients between November 2021 and April 2023, to be used for investments in NovaTech and HyperFund, according to the Arizona Corporate Commission.
According to the regulators, Boisselle represented to some of the investors that their money was safe, secure, and accessible to withdraw at any time and the principal investment amount would grow in their accounts over time.
“Beginning about August 2022, domestic and foreign regulators issued warnings to investors and brought legal actions against NovaTech,” according to the Arizona regulators. “Boisselle failed to disclose these legal actions to the investors she solicited.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 alleged both NovaTech and HyperFund were operated as fraudulent investment schemes, according to the August cease and desist order.
The SEC in January 2024 charged Xue Lee, also known as Sam Lee, and Brenda Chunga, also called Bitcoin Beautee, for their involvement in a fraudulent crypto asset pyramid scheme known as HyperFund that raised more than $1.7 billion from investors worldwide.
According to the SEC’s complaint, from June 2020 through early 2022, Lee and Chunga promoted HyperFund “membership” packages, which they claimed guaranteed investors high returns, including from HyperFund’s supposed crypto asset mining operations and associations with a Fortune 500 company.
And the SEC in December 2024 said it charged Cynthia and Eddy Petion, along with their company NovaTech Ltd., for operating a fraudulent scheme that raised more than $650 million in crypto assets from more than 200,000 investors worldwide, including many in the Haitian-American community.
According to the SEC’s complaint, the Petions operated NovaTech as a multi-level marketing and crypto asset investment program from 2019 through 2023. They lured investors by claiming NovaTech would invest their funds on crypto asset and foreign exchange markets.
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