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Chinese authorities have arrested all 27 major suspects of PlusToken Ponzi scheme

China's Ministry of Public Security has reportedly arrested all 27 major suspects of the PlusToken Ponzi scheme that defrauded nearly $3 billion from its victims.

Several Chinese news outlets reported the news on Thursday, saying that the ministry has also arrested 82 "key members" involved in the scheme.

In August 2019, Chinese police officials confirmed to The Block that six suspects affiliated with PlusToken had been arrested, but the main suspects were still on the run at the time.

PlusToken was launched in early 2018 and was already suspected to be a pyramid scheme as early as September 2018. In June 2019, the company triggered a wide-ranging panic among Chinese and Korean investors when some users reported that they could not withdraw funds from the wallets. However, the issues were then brushed off as a "hacker attack."

PlusToken managed to collect multi-billion dollars from about 800,000 investors. Over a period of time, hundreds of millions of dollars tied to PlusToken have been moved. Just last month, nearly 790,000 ETH, worth roughly $188 million at the time, were moved.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/73412/china-arrested-suspects-of-plustoken-ponzi-scheme

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It is not yet known whether the most important persons of this Scam have been arrested, but the fact that the scammers are systematically sent to prison makes me happy.

At least those affiliated with the project have been arrested. Maybe some more will be catch on the following days. Im just wondering how about the money they used or stolen from investors, is there a chance to get it feom them? Yes they are arrested but how about those 3billion  funds from 800k people, if nothing will be return then its still hurt like nothing happened.

There is no report that some money have been returned to the investors based on the article. They should have been jailed forever for their crime.

Great news, It is really good to see such people being arrested and will be trialed and punished later it will really discourage new ponzi scammers and it was high time to take action against these culprits. I think in next phase so called big leaders should also be arrested who lure innocent people into these ponzi schemes just for the sake of fast comissions.

I am not sure ponzi should be crime if it is that obvious.

People know it is ponzi but think if they join it early they should got profit from other people losses. It is like a gamble. People invest this not gullible, they are greedy.

Perhaps the key members of this project are from China, but I think that with such a large sum of money, they have to go abroad to be safe. Hopefully there will be a detailed article about the nationality and names of these scammer, they are really talented but working in the wrong place.

I’m quite elated to see the people who are starting the scam and Ponzi scheme is that surrounds us in different ways are you getting arrested and being put to jail period because I don’t think to promote this type of things are suitable for the image of cryptocurrency in general because they are using cryptocurrencies as the medium for those type of payments and creating downlines and other things that relate to Ponzi scheme is period

China is leading everything at the moment, as far as i know they were against ponzi coins and other scammy schemes and that is why they initially cracked down against all coins back in 2018 i guess, they just wanted to wipe out the bad guys and it is a great initiative i think it will pave way for real growth for genuine coins and projects in the future while blocking the bad projects.

Ponzi is not a crime itself but it will mostly be resulting into criminal charges when the scheme collapse. Of course, Most Ponzi schemes are all going in the same direction and maybe some investors don't know that it will turn out like that and they are just being promised by something assuring or being invited by someone who also wants to profit out from it.  Everything has risk but Ponzi schemes have the most risk at all and the owners probably run out after the program collapse.

It's good to know that something big has caught by the police in china but this is just a repeated process, I will not wonder if there's another Ponzi scheme will launch and too many investors will be scammed.

Chinese law enforcement agencies have done a lot of work to identify criminals involved in the Ponzi scheme PlusToken. But until I see that these billions of money received by scammers will not be returned to their rightful owners, the investigation of this crime must continue.

I hope there will be no Ponzi scheme like this anymore, it makes those who do not know much about Cryptocurrency afraid to know more about Cryptocurrency and invest but unfortunately there are still so many ponzi scheme in Dapps some of them are created using a smart contract and people should know how this things works.

That's sound good. Plustoken was a long time scam which which a lot of times crashed the market by dumping a lot of their coins. I hope the coin they are holding now will be seized.
Do anyone have any information on how much the scam are holding at the moment?

There will still be so many ponzi projects appearing in this market, I just hope that everyone should be alert and not be greedy with these projects. It will make them lose and lose all the money invested

It beats my imagination how people could be this greedy? How can they consume billion of dollars, stolen from the labouring masses. I'm yet to understand the motivation that Scammer have in stealing from the public. Life is so transient for one to be amassing such amount. They've been caught and are jailed, those funds are lieing desolate somewhere and their freedom has been taken from them. I wish they spend the rest of their life behind bar to serve as a deterrent to other con artists and wicked swindlers.

Other countries should also learn from China and take strict actions against people behind such ponzi schemes. I know there was some action against onecoin in the past but there are dozens and dozens of such projects and the authorities should follow and investigate them so that people and their money is safe.

Most of the investments schemes apart from cryptos are also work as ponzi but the money involved here decides whether it will be considered as ponzi or other mild offences.But here the money looted was very huge and lot of people involved in it so it is necessary for them to be arrested or else the market will have to face more scammers.

As long as these people who were part of the scam, they should be liable because they have been part of it. Commend for the Chinese authorities for chasing them and putting them at jail.
Hopeful that the next news would say that the important suspects were also part of this arrest.

There should be a way to recover the money also from these culprits either the authorities should take out liquid cash from them or recover money after selling their assets or real estate etc which they build using money from their ponzi and then complete audit should be run and money should be returned to the people according to percentage after audit. These steps will ensure safety of investor funds and the investors should also be warned to not invest in any ponzi again.

its be good news fro crypto investors that be their victim. atleast now scammers must thinking twice when they want stole money from investors. police could track them and even arrested only in short term.  and now the most important about is it still possible to recover investor's fund that be victim

And it makes me wonder that people are taking such risk for easy money. They knew China is a hard place to run a ponzi and not get arrested but they did it anyway. There's ought to be other links to the ponzi as most of these Chinese operation are masterminded from outside. There are instances of Chinese scammers establishing offices outside Chinese jurisdiction to target Chinese people for scam.

It's good to see the law and justice is working there. They should be hold fully responsible for their crime. Scamming and defrauding so much funds and treating people as fools. Why would people invest in such an obvious scam though..

it's good that they were arrested. perhaps after the recent arrests of scammers, there will be less of them and people will be afraid to scam investors and create new Ponzi schemes

This seem to be a good news,I hope it does make more Ponzi developers to take a break or put an end to it, I think it has caused so much harm than good, but sometimes I honestly don't even think of the administrators of those Ponzi but people who patronises them,if every one stays off it, I think it  come to an end,but no, everyone wants quick money.

This is good news only if among the arrested there are the largest fish of this scam, otherwise all captured were pawns that were led by the larger scammers.
The danger is that the main accomplices can easily create a second such pyramid, while pawns cannot.

It is a very very very scary and dangerous thing to do something like this in China. Can you imagine what they are doing to these guys in China? They have scammed over 3 billion dollars worth of money from people.

This is the same nation that rapes, harvest organs, beats and kills people for being Muslim and that's it, can you think of how much they could do to a person who stole from their own kind and got bigger without approval of the CCP? They could literally kill all the people who knew them, like all their family, all their relatives, all their friends if they have to, just to prove a point that nobody should even try to attempt that. They can do it, nobody will stop them, they could kill 10 million people tomorrow and nothing would happen, so 27 scammers would definitely not be a problem for them as well.

Yes, although the cryptocurrency isn't like assets or fiats so the works to seize and return those assets will take a long time before coming back to the hand of victims. Still, people should know better than invest in ponzi scheme no matter how good it sounds.

I've noticed an increase in ponzi, lately. It's as if swindlers are now multiplying in third world countries and deceiving the masses promising excess returns and since they're new to cryptocurrency they get carried away thinking that its a get rich quick scheme and they've been shown the light not knowing that their demise is near.

My displeasure also goes for the authorities who are condoning these crazy schemes in their countries. I hope they learn from China and bring these criminals to justice.

I see the insider trading behind the Bitcoin´s growth, someone knew about the information before the growth and took the opportunity. But, do not worry, Plustoken team owned a lot of BTCs and ETHs that constantly dumping. Now a lot of these coins are lost forever! No selling pressure. Time for new bull market? :)

Well after this big scam, people will still never learned and new scam might emerge again. Greedy people always makes these thieves rich because they keep on ignoring the risk and warnings from the authorities. It seems that amount involved just keep growing from time to time.

Expect that, people never learned with this kind of stupidity always aiming for quick profits.


Definitely, scammers will always have a safe haven from those greedy people who keeps investing and risking their money
in hope to get more in an easy to rich scheme.



As investors who didn't find time to research is growing more and more, investing to this ponzi business and losses their
money in the hands of scammers.

This is the best news that we could wish for.  8) I have read something about it and there is a high chance that they lose their private keys. There could be around 100 000 forever lost Bitcoins, which means again we have fewer Bitcoins in the circulating supply - higher price is possible in the future 8).

I only regret that it took so long and they managed to dump so many coins on the market.

The results would be much better if those people were arrested earlier and the coins seized and put on auction. We can't have all we want so I'm still happy with the outcome.

I wish this will teach those scammers building more Ponzi schemes a lesson while enlightening people that Ponzi is only used as a means to defraud because whatever they promised isn't true and will only benefit just few people with the greater part going to the team. Take a look at the amount they scammed, it is in fact too much and yet people will still give heed to Ponzi whenever they see them, thinking it is a quick way to make money while in fact it is a quick way to scam. I really commend the law enforcement for doing such a great work and arresting them.

I have never really thought China could fraud more than this amount of investors.
But what the essence of performing fraudulent acts, through some ponzi scheme, ponzi is not really a bad idea if planned accordingly and well structured, but some set of dudes finds this more interesting in scamming investors.

it is really a good new especially to those people who were scammed by this ponzi scheme.. hoping that these people serve what they got and will suffer as well same as those who have been scammed..i am hoping that no more people will be fooled like this one

I just saw the news about the devs of this project going to jail.. and I honestly think this Is the best news I've seen in the crypto space for a very long time.. we need better regulations to secure investors

This is exactly what should be done to these fraudsters who parade themselves as project developers and blockchain experts, float an IEO or tokensale with the sole purpose of defrauding investors. Most of these projects in the industry have absolutely nothing to offer but hype. Their intentions aren't pure and they aren't looking to solve any challenge but just looking to grab as much money as possible before disappearing into thin air. Hopefully, with this China crackdown, most of these fraudulent projects cease to exist.

But unfortunately, only few of these cases have been resolved. A lot of them already disappeared along with their collected money. Remember, there are so many anonymous projects launched in 2017 that raised huge funds and where are they now? Enjoying the money of others. But at least, this one got their justice but I wonder if they can recover some of those funds?

Good to hear that a lot of suspects involved in this Ponzi scheme were already caught. I think it will not take a long time before those other main suspects to get arrested as well. Imagine a single Ponzi scheme can defraud almost $3Billion, what more for other schemes still out there.

I have already seen a lot of similar news about scammers, so I think aside from arresting those suspects, the authorities should strengthen their awareness to the public about this kind of scheme to avoid more people getting victimized by these people.

$3B is a huge amount. Authorities just can't let this slide anymore. Jail time is good than just dumping thier bodies to a secluded Mexican desert.

This is really a good example so that scammers will really see that there are consequences to their actions. Authorities shouldn't pursuit those involve in Plus token, maybe they can also try the scam ICO and IEO teams.

Wonder why there are so many ponzi and MLM scams in China and Asian in general? I saw too many ponzi and MLM scams in that region and still don't get it why people still fall for those scams. Worst, scammers able to amass $3 billion before finally arrested by police. Was it because people were too naive or police are too incompleted?

If they try to keep the amount of money got from that ponzi scam in low profile, the Chinese authorities and polices will not investigate this? So $3B is really a lot and they can't turn blind anymore? Feel really bad for all the victim of this scam.

Serves them right. I think if these scammers will always get caught,it will really be nice,but come to think of it,why would people patronise these stuff,I think greed,they want to make fast money,I'm sure they have been warned severally yet they won't want to learn,everyone into these Ponzi stuff should advice themselves.

people will always continue to invest in such projects and this will not change. it is possible to simply stop the creation of such projects. if scammers will be afraid of jail, they will not scam people and steal their money

If truly all the plustoken criminals have been convicted, it's goodnews and should serve as a warning to those scammers always plotting to rip gullible investors off their hard earned funds. People are just Carlos, always finding new ways to scam, that's unfair. I hope people affected get refunded a certain percentage, but obviously this isn't forthcoming.

It is a good thing that the scammers are being caught by the Chinese police. The main scammer was not caught here, maybe he will be caught very soon. Because criminals can't hide themselves for long. Will be caught today or tomorrow. All those involved in such a huge scam should be arrested.

Plustoken ponzi scam is very popular among crypto scams. Since many scammers have been arrested who are involved in this scam, it is expected that the mastermind scammer will also be caught. But the real question is, will these scammers get their money back who invested in Plustoken scam?

Even after the PlusToken scam, there's still going to be a lot of scam Ponzi scheme coming up, I just hope it will not be as big as Plus Token and people should now learn what to look for when investing they should not go for Ponzi scheme with its empty promises,
they will eventually lose their investment and if you are a big affiliate here and invited a lot of people, authorities might think you are part of the team.

Its not stated if all have been jailed. But all accomplices reported has been caught. I think there are some members that are still on the loose and not caught. Im sure the one on the run will make a way to bail out those who are already in prison then they will start again another business related or new one. Crypto space is really bounded by political system. Why? Who believe they will forever locked in? They are actually rich people and will just give some bribery without having social news about them being release. Media business is paid.

Just spread more and more awareness thread for the newcomers and they will not try to invest in the crap or scam projects. I have been seeing so many people have been getting helped a lot caused by the awareness thread that have created by some people in the past.

There are many members in this community who are working hard to raise awareness. And there is a lot more awareness among newcomers than before. But the problem is that greed has increased among people. The more greed people have, the more scammers will get benefit, because they will be able to scam everytime with new websites. As a result, scammers are using this system to take money. However, the rest of the scammers will be much more careful now because of catching Plus token scammers.

Ponzi scheme is known for about 100 years and still, people fall down into it. After 100 years we didn´t learn anything about this type of fraud. Why? Because people love to be rich, at least in their thoughts  :D.

we ? no wtf . to be honest i am one of the victim on ponzi's but that was when im new to the world of investing but after i failed and learn thier system now i know why i failed to make a profit  but despite of what i learned i did not try to join again  . not only me but i believe other people learn from thier experience too and wont do the same thing again  . people are not the same  . we arent also the same people that are living on this planet but there were newly borned too and when they grew up they will fall on the same spot if we dont educate them as early as possible

There is nothing new about this Scam, it was all used many times before PlusToken used it, and many times after. Well, the first Ponzi scheme was used by Charles Ponzi in 1920, it is named after him such a scheme of scam. In the case of PlusToken, it is necessary not only to punish the scammers, but also to return the money to the deceived investors.

Wow, that is a real good news here in cryptocurrency. If crypto scammers get caught in real life, then the people who want to scam others must be reduced because they afraid to get caught. We need more news like this, so the amount of scammers in crypto will gone.


That "hacker attack" method is old, they pretend they have been hacked by the hacker, which is only a fabricated story to deceive their investors, very pathetic.

Launched in early 2018 and only got busted today with almost $3 billion from the scam? Hell, even I hate scammers, have to give them the credit for able to amass that much money with just a simple ponzi scheme at today.

They made it the system appear to last for lifetime and they promote income for life and quick rich, the human side of us is we want to make a lot of money at minimal effort with a system in place, so people gamble because they see people actually making money but late comers are not lucky because the Ponzi Scheme company run away with member's money.

There are many of these schemes not only in China and Japan, there are many of them everywhere. Nowadays, many come from Singapore, usually related to cryptocurrency.
Quite a few of these schemes are based in Russia. Beautiful words, marketing and the hope that you will get rich this time leads people straight into this trap. And of course, financial illiteracy does its job.

Dropping names of country where scam originated is not really good but anyway this is the life of anonymous. Anyone are free to scrutinize without exposing identity.

Scams really come from all over the world. Mostly scammers come from most corrupt country. Scammers were just like being encourage from those countries seeing unsystematic leaders that are corrupt. They just follow what leaders do and this is why others are very innovative creating their ways on scamming. Old school tricks still effective.

Try to.post here that you will buy bitcoin and many users will going to pm you trying to scam you. Some of them are idiot scammers.

I hope the fraudster who do these type of things are put behind the bars for a long time and the authorities make a lesson out of them for the people. Cheating people is no less evil especially when a large amount of money is involved.

It feels good to know that there are scammers that are still getting arrested because of this ponzi schemes in crypto.
I was once a victim of Ponzi schemes or other investment in crypto currency and it feels really terrible when our crypto investments turn out to be scam and we couldn't do anything about it since we know that they are only using fake info's.
So this would really feel good for those who have been their victim although we know that their money wouldn't go back to them.

Good news for everyone investors even personally me. Anyway billions of money received there but i was waiting to know what the next step might be. Also many scammers are now afraid so the number of scammers from China will decrease as a result of implementing this measure. In my opinion, if such legal action needs to be taken in all countries, then there will be no amount of scammers and the confidence of investors will increase.

luckily the Chinese government was able and willing to catch the Ponzi person. Ponzi schemes can actually be known from the start of registration, usually required to get a referral, and must pay. even though there were 2018 plus tokens available, but recently they were caught. do they really already know ponzi and because they are not yet profitable so they continue it?

I hope the main suspect of this Ponzi scam is among those people who were arrested.  I really love to see this criminals to go to jail and spend the majority of their  life behind the bar.  May this news serve as a warning to those who are attempting to use this kind of fraudulent activity to gain money from unsuspecting investors. 

This is indeed a good news, defrauding people of more than $3 billion is a huge scam which should be frown at every sane level and it's really great seeing Chinese authority takes up the mantle to make sure the Mastermides behind the scam are taking behind bars.  I hope the scam victim will be compensated no matter how small

It’s good to know that they have been brought to face judgement. Imagine that every scammer should be caught the same way as they have done with these people, they will all think twice about it twice before engaging in such things as scamming people. Would be better for them if they look for a better means to make money than scamming others.

Even if the main person that orchestrated the plan hasn’t been caught yet, the people that has been caught will help in giving information that will lead to knowing where their leader is. And with those information the law enforcement will be able to trace them wherever they are. And I hope to see that happen, if this is right.

That is how ponzi scheme works. There will always be victims, because the purpose of its launch most times is to amass fund and laterchart people's money away. most of them use the crypto space as a fast avenue to collect funds and later look for dubious means to run away. Projects like Bitconnect ougt to have been caught, i mean their team members, but toat=y we do not know their whereabout.

may i know the process of refunding investors. since it has been discovered that the project is a scam. are they not going to refunds those that invested their money on the project or the government is going to seize the money. there should be a way of sending the money back to the owners and encourage them to invest wisely.

Nice effort from Chinese authority, I'm also happy that scammers are not getting away with it no more and i hope a refund will be made to the victims of the plus token ponzi scheme. I learnt the scame was orchestrated by a large team and only few has been captured so far but i have no doubt, even the remaining once will be brought behind bars

Glad to see a change in things, scammers going to jail, what about the money they collected, will they confiscate everything and return to the investors, the good aspect of legalization of the entire market is that anyone trying to scam investors will be behind bars and for that sole reason i would like to see strict regulation on collecting funds and these scum bags should rot in jail.

How about the money that they scammed?

Was it recovered or is it possible to be recovered?

I didn't read it in the article so I just ask your opinion regarding this. If this money are still moving, there must be some people out there that are still free to move and spend the funds for their interest, so this is just a partial justice, a full justice will only be achieved once the money will be return to the people who got scammed, either part or portion of it, they'll already be happy with that.

Ponzi platforms have brought negative critism to cryptocurrency, the developers see it as easy means to make money. People have not stopped patronizing ponzi and that is why new schemes would find their way to the market despite warning, arrest made to culprit.

Obviously the answered to that is gone. It did not mentioned about the money if its gonna be recovered the topic only focus on the arrested plus token members. Its really dissapointing knowing that these people wasted other people's money.

Im likely to know too if incident like this have some return of funds for those got victim of the scam. But since they have chosen to invest on a none government authorized companies, there will be no refund probably on this case.

Ponzi and other way of scamming scheme has been expose already to the public and people had already been vigilant with this. So any time they will be reported and get arrested by the authorities. The continuous combat against this scheme will never have its end because scammers will find a way to fulfill their goals. Unless if we all keep fighting with it.

The question is, do the authorities will give back the money to the investors? Or they will keep it? Ihope they will as it gives hopes for investors to recover their money back.
He should face the consequences that he made. It sooner he will be of together with his friends.

All those who are associated with PlusToken office and promotion should be charged but it's just so disheartening that the big wings are still at large when they are the one supposed to be the first to go to jail for launching Plustoken and scamming investors with billions of dollars, justice should be served for the victims.

That's supposed the right thing to do, those big gainers behind this project should be the one who's being punished.

The people / victims are now getting some justice but this should not be stopping from here,
everyone who are involved should also be punished after this people who got caught.

This is really a good news for investors specially those who are searching or planning to invest in this ponzi scheme. For the past recent years, investing becomes worst in online. Many ICO before was shutdown because the project is a scam. I hope someday ponzi scheme will be eradicated because it os the one that destroys the potential growth of every project. Scammers are the cancer of every investment. They are the online thief that we should be avoided.

There are statistics showing which countries have the most scams. This does not characterise the people living there in a bad way. Although from the point of view of ignorance at the expense of which any scam lives, these countries do lag behind to some extent. It is ignorance that allows scammers to deceive people who are too lazy to learn. It is these people who become the first victims of any scam.

things like this will put other projects that may have such mind into order. the fact that they will hunted down is enough to make them behave in a normal way. and most importantly is how the funds will be collected and returned to the investors. if this si down then thats a full justice.

I think we don't need such statistics. The number of scammers in all countries will be approximately the same, but not everyone has access to the necessary means of distributing such information. Very often, people become victims of scammers when they lose hope of earning money in a legal way and use such Ponzi schemes as the last opportunity to fix their financial situation.

It is completely false, people tend to find attractive returns and jump onto ponzi schemes, in real world you cannot expect multiple returns by investing your money in stock or bonds in a short period and all they know is that the cryptocurrency world will provide instant profit and that is how majority jump into these scams.

The funds will be traced by the police and in my opinion if the same method will be used to return the investor's money too. You should watch the process that already used by SEC to return the investor's fund.

The investors will have needed to provide the evidence if they have already invested in the scam project and there will be a verification to return the money back to the its owner.

However, it is better to move than to stand still, even in small steps. The cryptocurrency is not regulated, which means that scammers can feel very relaxed. BUT such cases show us that times are changing, now, before conceiving a scam, they have to think about it. Because there is a possibility that they will be found and sent to prison. Not a single scam is forgotten. It is possible that in 10 years we will continue to jail the people who created the scams in 2017.