The Securities and Exchange Commission said late Wednesday that online cryptocurrency lending platform BitConnect, its founder Satish Kumbhani and others allegedly defrauded retail investors out of $2 billion and used a fake "bot" to lure investors to the platform. According to the SEC's complaint, from early 2017 through January 2018 the defendants conducted "a fraudulent and unregistered offering and sale of securities in the form of investments in a 'lending program' offered by BitConnect. To attract investors, the complaint alleged, the defendants falsely claimed that BitConnect would deploy a "purportedly proprietary 'volatility software trading bot'" that would generate sky-high exorbitantly high returns, among other irregularities.