Unicoin received a Wells notice from the SEC last December, informing the company that the regulator — then under the leadership of former Chair Gary Gensler — intended to file securities fraud charges. Last month, Konanykhin sent a letter to Unicoin’s shareholders, informing them that the company had rebuffed the SEC’s attempt to settle the charges, rejecting what he described as an “ultimatum” to attend a settlement negotiation meeting by April 18. “We declined to show up,” Konanykhin told CoinDesk in an April interview, adding that the SEC had made certain pre-meeting demands he deemed “unacceptable” and claiming that the SEC’s probe had caused “multi-billion-dollar damages” to the company.