Lowell Man Charged With Crowdfunding Fraud

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff, boston.com

Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin has charged a Lowell man with “crowd-funding fraud,” his office said Thursday.

According to Galvin’s complaint, Christopher Melville of Lowell sold unregistered securities through a “crowd-funding social media-facilitated general solicitation for his company,” Tabletop Arena LLC.”

Attempts to reach Melville were not immediately successful.

Galvin also sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission urging the SEC to adopt strong investor protection in rules for crowd-funding securities offerings.

As Galvin’s press release noted, crowd-funding is a securities regulation exemption in the federal JOBS Act designed to allow small start-up companies to raise capital from large numbers of small investors, usually through social media. The idea is that potential investors will sift through offerings for the best ones, aided by group decision-making in the social media environment. View Full Story