Finding Section 12 of the Securities Act of 1933 contains "no free pass for online solicitations," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Friday ruled that a promotion team can be held liable for using online communications to persuade people to invest in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.

The appeals court rejected BitConnect promoters' arguments that they can't be held liable in a suit against them because their advertisements to invest in the Ponzi scheme were made to the general public, not in sales pitches to individual people.