"Better than bitcoin" altcoin sellers arrested for stealing $340 million

[b!z]

In a bust on Friday, Thai police arrested four executives on charges of operating a pyramid scheme selling a cryptocurrency called “Utoken”, and stealing over 10 billion baht (roughly US$310 million).

http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/04/13/arrests-in-ufun-crypto-currency-pyramid-scheme/

Definitely one of the biggest bitcoin-related scams in recent times. I myself have not heard of Utoken before, and they stole 1/3 billion USD.

Makes me wonder how many other scams/ponzis are still running out there and how much money they have. Your thoughts?

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[Mike Christ]

Remain prudent; don't let greed get in the way of judgment.  TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

Anyway, I have no doubt these things will keep happening; as they say, there's a new sucker born every second...

[b!z]

TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

You don't sympathize?

[Mike Christ]

TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

You don't sympathize?

I do, everyone makes mistakes, but a part of making mistakes is experiencing the effect of those mistakes; if they get their money back then the learning experience is lost and they'll wind up making the same mistake with the belief that they'll get their money back again.  This is what allows ponzis and pyramids to occur at all: there's no more risk involved, or so they believe, until one of these schemers winds up succeeding with a lot more cash than he would've if everyone knew to avoid such schemes in the first place and to only deal with reputable businesses.  Of course, the schemers do their best to hide that they're a scheme, but still, there's signs.

[Amph]

Makes me wonder how many other scams/ponzis are still running out there and how much money they have. Your thoughts?

it worth nothing that in 2013 after the doge peak the altcoin section was full of malicious devs, who were running their scam-fest, consisting of many alts, like aurora/blackcoin /maxcoin/stockcoin(the first one) ecc....,

i was there for every one, and i can tells you that with the first three they have surpassed by a long shot the 340M of this news..

actually i think that with aurora only, they have scammed a monstrous amount(i remember that coin surpassed litecoin in value, when litecoin was worth about 300M+)

nowadays there are still scam pos coins with bad/fake distribution and other crap like that

[ashour]

Holy cow $340 million  . How in the world did they manage to scam to much money? Really sad to hear that people lost money on this, be careful were you invest people.

[pedrog]

TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

So, when someone is victim of a crime it's their fault and they should be punished for being scammed?

I already saw some similar schemes being discussed in this forum, Onecoin comes to mind.

[Mike Christ]

TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

So, when someone is victim of a crime it's their fault and they should be punished for being scammed?

I already saw some similar schemes being discussed in this forum, Onecoin comes to mind.

They allowed themselves to be scammed; it's like leaving all your doors and windows open on your car with the keys in the ignition and then complaining someone took it.  Sometimes it can't be helped, but bad business practices are not one of those cases.  The schemers did not steal this money, it was given to them.

[ashour]

TBH I think these guys who played into the scheme should lose their money as a lesson to what happens when you give your trust away to people who don't deserve it.  But I'm just hardcore like that.

So, when someone is victim of a crime it's their fault and they should be punished for being scammed?

I already saw some similar schemes being discussed in this forum, Onecoin comes to mind.

Users should be more careful when they trust services like this, their money can instantly dissapear. IMO more regulations should happen regarding bitcoin/crypto currencies/virtual currencies etc to prevent events like these.

[pereira4]

In a bust on Friday, Thai police arrested four executives on charges of operating a pyramid scheme selling a cryptocurrency called “Utoken”, and stealing over 10 billion baht (roughly US$310 million).

http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/04/13/arrests-in-ufun-crypto-currency-pyramid-scheme/

Definitely one of the biggest bitcoin-related scams in recent times. I myself have not heard of Utoken before, and they stole 1/3 billion USD.

Makes me wonder how many other scams/ponzis are still running out there and how much money they have. Your thoughts?

Pretty scary how they managed to raise 310 million... people is pretty naive, specially when they believe "this cryptocurrency is better than Bitcoin".

[ebliever]

Makes me wonder how many other scams/ponzis are still running out there and how much money they have. Your thoughts?

it worth nothing that in 2013 after the doge peak the altcoin section was full of malicious devs, who were running their scam-fest, consisting of many alts, like aurora/blackcoin /maxcoin/stockcoin(the first one) ecc....,

i was there for every one, and i can tells you that with the first three they have surpassed by a long shot the 340M of this news..

actually i think that with aurora only, they have scammed a monstrous amount(i remember that coin surpassed litecoin in value, when litecoin was worth about 300M+)

nowadays there are still scam pos coins with bad/fake distribution and other crap like that

Whoah, slow down. There is a lot of scam activity including devs, but how do you justify calling the first three you mention scams? (I'm not familiar with the fourth). It's possible I've missed some important news, but I do try to pay attention so I'm surprised if I missed anything major.

1. Auroracoin was an ambitious effort by pretty much one lone dev, which failed for lack of support/infrastructure/software development that would realistically have been needed for it to be a success in its intention of providing Iceland a cryptocurrency. But despite a lot of hollering about it being a scam, I never saw a whiff of evidence to justify the accusations and it looks like the airdrop took place as intended. (It's all the hasty country-coins that followed it that would be more worthy of such scrutiny.)

2. Blackcoin - ambitious marketing and plans, and in-fighting among the devs, and I've seen accusations of whales attempting to manipulate it. But none of that justifies calling the coin itself a scam or calling the devs scammers.

3. Maxcoin - isn't this the Max Keiser coin? So how does that make it a scam? I've paid less attention to it, but again, how do you justify calling it a scam?

Only Auroracoin topped $100 million in market cap IIRC (with it hitting $1 Billion), so how can you claim each of these coins was somehow involved in >$340 million scams? Granted there is a lot of trouble in the alts, but let's not be wildly inaccurate in describing the issues.

[PolarPoint]

The scam operated in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. People there are less aware of cryptos. Can't blame them.

[QuestionAuthority]

Very sad. The more scams like this happening worldwide the more likely the uninformed regular guy will see "crypto currency" and mentally replace it with the word "scam".

[Inotanewbie]

The scam operated in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. People there are less aware of cryptos. Can't blame them.

So because the scam was operated in these countries where they are aware enough to buy the cryptos that means you can't blame them, hmmm if they are aware enough to buy the crypto i think they are aware enough would you not agree. Anyway not sure anyone will blame them that is their own business and something they have to deal with themselves. But.. You should not tell people what they can and cannot do  

Wow op that is a shed load of money, especially when you take into account they are not the richest of countries to begin with. The operators would have led a life of basically royalty, such a shame they will never see a penny of it aha and they will in fact live the opposite life to what they had planned.

There are definitely many more got to go now need to 'DASH'      

[Sheldor333]

Holy cow $340 million  . How in the world did they manage to scam to much money? Really sad to hear that people lost money on this, be careful were you invest people.

My thoughts exactly. I mean you must be skillful in attracting people then, so why not start a legitimate business. Extent of greed amazes me sometimes.

[Jybrael]

People really need to take everything out there with a grain of salt...they need to do proper research when investing into a new coin or business for that matter. Because ponzi schemes and scams are everywhere now a days and being able to tell a scam from a legitimate business would require you to do proper research. I do feel bad for those that fall for Ponzi schemes...I hope they don't fall victim to those tricks again.

[PolarPoint]

The scam operated in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. People there are less aware of cryptos. Can't blame them.

So because the scam was operated in these countries where they are aware enough to buy the cryptos that means you can't blame them, hmmm if they are aware enough to buy the crypto i think they are aware enough would you not agree. Anyway not sure anyone will blame them that is their own business and something they have to deal with themselves. But.. You should not tell people what they can and cannot do  

You haven't read the article, have you? They are buying cosmetics and stuff and are scammed into investing into cryptos to get discounts.

[gentlemand]

it worth nothing that in 2013 after the doge peak the altcoin section was full of malicious devs, who were running their scam-fest, consisting of many alts, like aurora/blackcoin /maxcoin/stockcoin(the first one) ecc....,

i was there for every one, and i can tells you that with the first three they have surpassed by a long shot the 340M of this news..

actually i think that with aurora only, they have scammed a monstrous amount(i remember that coin surpassed litecoin in value, when litecoin was worth about 300M+)

I'm sure whoever was involved in some of the dodgy coins made a pretty penny but market caps are meaningless. If a developer tried to cash out their premine coin with the multi million dollar market cap they might just about scrape ten to fifty grand before the most markets would fatally vapourise.

[odolvlobo]

Keep in mind that utoken is not a cryptocurrency and it is completely unrelated to Bitcoin.

[snapter]

...

3. Maxcoin - isn't this the Max Keiser coin? So how does that make it a scam? I've paid less attention to it, but again, how do you justify calling it a scam?

....

It's a clone of Blakecoin, when it launched they didn't change all the names from Blakecoin to Maxcoin, so when you encrypted the wallet, it displayed a warning that if you forget your passcode, you may lose all your Blakecoins.

Being badly cloned doesn't necessarily make it a scam, but it starts you wondering.