The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday filed criminal charges against a man alleged to have been running a dubious bitcoin trading business along with a related co-working space company.

Renwick Haddow (pictured), described as a U.K. citizen living in New York, ran an unregistered broker-dealer business using sales representatives to cold-call potential investors and sell securities in his companies Bitcoin Store Inc. and Bar Works Inc.

Marketing material provided to potential Bitcoin Store investors claimed that the business was “an easy-to-use and secure way of holding and trading bitcoin” and that the business had already generated “several million dollars in gross sales.” The SEC alleges that the business in fact never had any operations nor generated the gross sales it touted.

With both Bitcoin Store and Bar Works, Haddow is alleged to have created fake executives to tout the businesses to potential investors, including a fake chief executive officer named Gordon Phillips. He both appeared in promotional videos for the service and claimed on a fake LinkedIn page that he previously worked for HSBC and Deutsche Bank.

The SEC claims that having sucked investors in, Haddow then diverted more than 80 percent of the funds raised by Bitcoin Store and more than $4 million in funds raised by Bar Works to “one or more accounts in Mauritius and $1 million to one or more accounts in Morocco.” How much money Haddow managed to scam from the Bitcoin Store is not clear, but the SEC claims that Haddow managed to raise $37 million from Bar Works investors.

Haddow, who had been previously disqualified from serving as a company director for eight years in the U.K. following his “misconduct as finance director,” is facing multiple charges under the Securities Exchange Act. and could be facing as long as 20 years behind bars.

Photo: Renwick Haddow/social media