Ponzi scheme!
A virtual boss creates a virtual company to scam $1.3 billion worth of bitcoins
In recent years, virtual currency fraud cases have been on the rise, and Ponzi schemes are one of the most prevalent.
According to the British "Daily Mail" on April 21, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) disclosed in March that a British man named "Benjamin Reynolds" established a Pang The scam defrauded nearly 1.3 billion U.S. dollars worth of Bitcoin.
The court found Reynolds returned the fraudulent money and imposed several times the fine.
The victims were told not to expect a penny back.
Because "Reynolds" is not as simple as running out of money, this person may never have existed.
As a result, a virtual character defrauded the virtual currency through a fake company, but cut off the real "leeks."
Virtual company scams virtual currency and claims monthly return of 45%
According to reports, in May 2017, Control-Finance Investment Company advertisements appeared on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, peddling attractive Bitcoin investment opportunities.
Of course these are just lies.
The owner of the company "Reynolds" put all these bitcoins into his pocket.
Only 5 months later, he suddenly shut down the company's official website and deleted the ads on various platforms.
In order to prevent investors from being suspicious, he also performed an "exit show" and emailed customers that the company would resume operations and return their bitcoins within a few weeks.
The fraudulent scheme is quite thorough, and the execution can be called "professional".
"Reynolds" claimed to be an Englishman living in Manchester.
According to CFTC news, "Reynolds" forged British company registration documents and claimed in the video posted on the official website and social media that it hired "virtual currency elite traders."
After the incident in June 2019, US prosecutors found that some of the assets had been transferred to bank accounts in offshore “tax havens” such as Seychelles.
Reynolds found no such person.
The District Court of the Southern District of New York ruled in an absentee trial that the key figure in the online Ponzi fraud and the sole owner of the company "Benjamin Reynolds" returned 143 million U.S. dollars and imposed a fine of 429 million U.S. dollars. Undertake 572 million US dollars.
$1.3 billion in fraud
Virtual characters cut the real "leeks"
"Daily Mail" confirmed on April 20 that the person alleged to be "Reynolds" in the Control-Finance company video is actually a talk show comedian and poker player Metz from Estonia.
There are always loopholes in exquisite scams.
The fraud of "Reynolds" aroused some people's suspicion from the beginning.
Some people questioned how this company could achieve the promised high returns.
One person even contacted the company's Manchester address and phone number.
As a result, no one answered the call, and the building management at his address knew nothing about the company.
The official website of this company that claims to be in the UK is registered in the US by an Internet service provider, and all its transactions are conducted through this official website.
Some American spelling words appeared on the official website.
However, those investors still did not hear the alarm bells ringing.
According to official sources in the United States, "Reynolds" defrauded 22,190,542 bitcoins from more than 1,000 investors around the world, which was valued at US$143 million at the time, and has now risen to US$1.3 billion.
Of all this money, "Reynolds" only refunded $12,411.
Frequent cases of virtual currency fraud
The same tricks keep playing
In the world of virtual currency, the difficulty of verifying identity is not surprising.
The founder of Bitcoin has always used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still unknown.
It is precisely because Bitcoin buyers and sellers can hide behind pseudonyms, criminals who need to hide traces of wealth and launder money especially favor this "invention".
Many people are worried that the skyrocketing Bitcoin is already a huge bubble waiting to burst, but its price is still reaching new highs again and again.
And Coinbase, the largest bitcoin trading company in the United States, has also taken advantage of this shareholder ethos to make history on Wall Street, and its NASDAQ listing is worth nearly $100 billion.
In such a madness, many investors plunged in, wanting to take advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune.
And Control-Finance and "Reynolds" just revealed the other side of virtual currency-thousands of investors became leeks and were severely cut.
Chengdu Commercial Daily-Red Star News Reporter Lin Rong