This GIGA Influencer Was Charged by the SEC for Defrauding Investors

Early Wednesday, Coinbase added to its listings roadmap the memecoin GIGA, one of whose biggest influencers is a former equity fund founder charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding investors of at least $3 million.

Unchained identified this person as Joshua Goltry, who has the nickname Tiger and goes by the username @NotChaseColeman on X.

Goltry uses his online platform of nearly 50,000 followers to promote GIGA, which, in light of its inclusion on Coinbase’s listings roadmap on Wednesday, jumped more than 50% from 4 cents at 9:30 a.m. EST to 6 cents by 9:40 a.m. By press time, it had settled at just under 5 cents, market data from CoinGecko shows. GIGA currently has a $477 million market cap and 56,202 holders on the Solana blockchain.

Four people recall Goltry saying he is a substantial GIGA whale, crypto parlance for someone who holds a significant amount of tokens. One of the sources noted that he told a bunch of people how much GIGA he owned and showed his wallets.

When reached by phone, Goltry at first said “every single line” Unchained planned to say in this article, even including that his name was Josh Goltry, was “not true.” After conceding that he is Goltry, who goes by the nickname Tiger and that he had settled his fraud case with the SEC, and after being presented with the fact that multiple people remember him boasting about being a GIGA whale, he denied being a current top GIGA holder.

While a fifth source told Unchained that Goltry said he is GIGA’s top holder, Goltry denied it. “I am not the largest holder of GIGA. I’m far from it — maybe I was at some point, but I’m not currently… I am not significant anymore,” he told Unchained. He also claimed to not remember declaring he was GIGA’s top holder.

The Influence of Goltry and All GIGA Whales

As a vocal community member of the memecoin based on fitness, Goltry sharing his thoughts and sentiments about GIGA on X played a role in some people accumulating the token. One X user who goes by @ETimes89 said publicly to Goltry, “Thankful I found and copy traded Giga GCR. My life is immeasurably better because of American Gigachads.” Goltry refers to himself as “GigaGCR,” which is part of his Telegram handle.

Another holder with the username @Saitamaenthu wrote on X, “I told you not to take @NotChaseColeman lightly! The marketing wallets, the listings, the really genuine folks supporting $Giga, and the community along with Giga fitness brand!”

A different user @johnny_bbbbbb responded to one of Goltry’s tweets saying, “Most bullish thing I’ve seen in months – buying more – thank you!” On Nov. 12, @borntopiss replied to Goltry, “I trusted you @NotChaseColeman. I chose to believe in something. Full port into @GIGA. And not ten minutes later, rock bottom. I still believe. My soul rejects the quality of bearishness. But is it conviction I hold, or delusion?”

Meanwhile, a number of the top 100 holders of GIGA hold roughly equivalent amounts of the memecoin, a sign of how GIGA is concentrated among a few holders, according to one of Unchained’s sources.

Addresses ranked 74-81 each hold 30 million GIGA tokens. (Solscan)

Wallets holding the same amount of tokens is a sign of what’s called “bundling … what people do to conceal that a small group of people control the supply,” said one source over Telegram, who requested to remain anonymous.

Goltry Admitted to TradFi Fraud

According to a June 2024 announcement by the SEC about its fraud case against Goltry and his investment management firm, JAG Capital Advisors, he “raised at least $3 million from approximately nine investors by lying about nearly every aspect of the fund, including its performance, investment activity, and investment risks.”

The complaint stated that Goltry and JAG spent more than $1.1 million on personal expenses, but lost more than $1.7 million through risky, speculative trading and investments, and that they falsified documents to hide the losses from their investors.

A 2023 court document in which the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey charged Goltry for securities fraud also detailed various ways he misrepresented his investors such as including “charts falsely asserting that JAG Capital’s performance far outperformed three well-known stock indices nearly every quarter.”

“Goltry claimed to investors that he would invest their money in securities for which he performed ‘extensive due diligence,’ including ‘diversified tech opportunities’ when in reality, he used investor money to repay previous investors and to pay for his own lifestyle, including paying for the rent on his Manhattan apartment, vacations, and personal credit card bills,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

Newark Special Agent in Charge James E. Dennehy said in the statement, “Goltry admits lying to his clients, promising huge returns that he pulled out of thin air, and then lying several more times to secure funding so he could keep the scheme going.”

Goltry said his run-in with the SEC, the result of which is a ban from the securities industry, was not relevant to GIGA. “I settled the charges. I started a new beginning in a project I really believe, and yes, at one point, I became a big voice for it, but to make the assumption that 1) I had everything to do with its rise and 2) that there is any correlation of my past and GIGA or my former job and GIGA is asinine.”

In the past Goltry’s X account, @NotChaseColeman, was public, but is now private. When asked why, he said, “None of your business.”

X user, @Zer0Admi, made a video showing evidence that Goltry is also a “Tether Truther,” slang for those who are skeptical that the largest stablecoin provider is fully backing its stablecoin USDT, which is the largest stablecoin and has a $135.7 billion market cap.

@Zer0Admi’s advanced search on X between @NotChaseColeman and fellow Tether Truther @Bitfinexed shows a long history of interactions between the two accounts. Goltry denied the “Tether Truther” designation, saying, “not true.”