Delaware authorities refer fake BlackRock XRP trust filing to state’s Justice Department

A fake fil­ing pub­lished to the State of Delaware’s Divi­sion of Cor­po­ra­tions on Nov. 13 will be referred to the Delaware Depart­ment of Justice.

In a Nov. 14 state­ment, a spokesper­son for the Delaware Depart­ment of State told Coin­tele­graph that the false fil­ing claim­ing that asset man­ag­er Black­Rock reg­is­tered an “iShares XRP Trust” would be referred to state author­i­ties. The reg­is­tra­tion, which appeared as a list­ing on the state’s Divi­sion of Cor­po­ra­tions on Nov. 13, momen­tar­i­ly caused the price of XRP to surge rough­ly 12% before los­ing its gains when the false­hood was revealed.

LATEST ON FAKE XRP ETF FILING: “Our only com­ment is that this mat­ter has been referred to the Delaware Depart­ment of Jus­tice,” the spokesper­son (for Delaware Dept of State) said. Damn. Some­one out there is crap­ping their pants as we speak.. https://t.co/Xea226Q1vT

— Eric Balchu­nas (@EricBalchunas) Novem­ber 14, 2023

It’s unclear what action, if any, the Delaware Jus­tice Depart­ment may take in response to the refer­ral. The par­ty or par­ties respon­si­ble for the fake list­ing appeared to have used Black­Rock man­ag­ing direc­tor Daniel Schwieger’s name to reg­is­ter the trust, sug­gest­ing poten­tial fraud if XRP (XRP) trans­ac­tions were involved.

Relat­ed: XRP becomes 4th largest cryp­to after Ripple’s par­tial win over SEC

The fake XRP trust fil­ing hint­ed that Black­Rock could have been plan­ning to launch an XRP-linked exchange-trad­ed fund (ETF) in the Unit­ed States — a major mile­stone for the cryp­to space. Black­Rock reg­is­tered an Ether (ETH) trust in Delaware on Nov. 9, but to date, the U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion has not approved the list­ing of any spot cryp­to ETF.

Mag­a­zine: US enforce­ment agen­cies are turn­ing up the heat on cryp­to-relat­ed crime