The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), has cited thirteen GSPartners enforcement actions as examples of US state regulators “fighting fraud”.

GSPartners launched in 2020 and was a fraudulent investment scheme initially built around its G999 token. After G999 collapsed sometime after 2022, GSPartners switched to USDT and various other internal tokens.

GSPartners itself collapsed in late 2023. NASAA has pegged GSPartners investor losses worldwide at almost a billion.

The GSPartners fraud cases were cited by the NASAA in a September 17th letter to the US House Committee on Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Securities regulators routinely initiate enforcement actions to protect investors in their jurisdictions from all types of financial fraud and other misconduct.

Unfortunately, bad actors in our capital markets are skilled at using new technologies to defraud or otherwise take advantage of the investing public.

In the 2010s, they began to exploit distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), ultimately prompting state securities regulators in 2017 to initiate a coordinated effort to investigate and bring enforcement actions against frauds associated with uses of DLTs.

Since 2017, state securities regulators have taken over 330 enforcement actions involving fraud in the crypto ecosystem.

Broadly, the fraud underlying these cases pertained to securities offerings, trading platforms, investment advisory services, Ponzi schemes, and crypto mining.

NASAA groups the GSPartners enforcement actions as “crypto offering frauds”. GSPartners enforcement actions from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Arizona (Swiss Valorem Bank), New Hampshire, Mississippi, California, Texas (Billionico, dismissed July 2025), Washington and Wisconsin are cited.

The “bad actor” behind GSPartners is Josip Heit (right).

Heit, originally from Croatia but believed to hold a German passport, now spends most of his time in Dubai.

North American regulators took action against GSPartners, parent company GSB Standard Corporation and Heit across 2023 and 2024.

Heit settled with North American regulators in September 2024.

Citing settlement terms violations and fraud, Texas pulled out of the North American GSPartners settlement in March 2025. GSPartners settlement negotiations with Texas were reopened last month.

Outside of Texas, the claim deadline for North American GSPartners victims (in participating settlement states) was May 22nd. There have been no public updates from third-party claims admin AlixPartners since.

On August 20th the Arizona Securities Commission filed a Status Report as part of GSPartners fraud proceedings;

The claims filing period closed on May 22, 2025, and the claims administrator is now reviewing the filed claims.

In addition to Arizona, there are approximately 45 other jurisdictions involved with the claims process.

Given the structure of the claims process and the number of claimants, the claims administrator needs sufficient time to complete their verification efforts.

Outside of North America Heit has continued GSPartners fraud through DAO1 and Apertum Foundation’s APTM token.

On September 4th Josip Heit informed GSPartners victims outside of North America their G999 tokens would be imported into DAO1 and Apertum Foundation.

[6:42] We are very proud to announce that G999 will be implemented as a pair in Apertum DEX, ladies and gentlemen.

So everyone whose jurisdiction is allowed to register in DAO1 will be able to participate with G999. And many more possibilities will be announced in DAO1, ladies and gentlemen.

[7:31] And yes, we will have G999 implemented during this month of September.

We will have any other project [in GSPartners], and other project [in GSPartners] which we have, any other product which we had [in GSPartners], it will be implemented step by step.

DAO1 fraud warnings have already been issued by Australia and New Zealand.

In August 2025, SimilarWeb tracked a 35% month-on-month decline in DAO1 website traffic.

Germany had been the top source of DAO1 traffic in July. For August 2025, SimilarWeb ranked top sources of DAO1 website traffic as the Dominican Republic (35%), the US (18%), Germany (16%), Greece (10%) and France (9%).

As part of a broader list of cryptocurrency related fraud, NASAA cites the GSPartners cases as a caution against Congress weaking or removing “state authority”.

Failing to preserve the ability of states to fight fraud involving new and emerging technology would be a decision with net-negative, significant consequences for Americans in all corners of this great country. Respectfully, these consequences are evident.

The fight against fraud is unrelenting and we remain vigilant in the face of increased sophistication in types of fraud and methods used by fraudsters.

As state securities regulators, we play a crucial role in the successful prosecution of securities offenses.

We often prosecute securities law violations, either through inherent prosecutorial authority or appointments from district attorneys or attorneys general.

We also work in parallel with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate complex schemes, refer cases for criminal prosecution, and testify in criminal proceedings as fact and expert witnesses.

NASAA’s letter to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is signed off on by association President Marni Rock Gibson.