PlusToken exit scam moved 22,923 BTC

[alexcopper]

Is anyone following this story and worried? Apparently the PlusToken crypto scheme moved $240 million in a total of four transactions. CipherTrace revealed that the platform involved Chinese nationals, the Chinese police and the company's cofounders.

If confirmed, this would be the largest crypto exit scam totaling a loss of $2.9 billion.


https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/plustoken-allegedly-moved-large-amounts-of-btc-in-four-transactions-totaling-22-923-btc-201908192159

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[Slow death]

Here they say 3 billion:

10 million investors scammed of $3 billion

As Wan outlines, PlusToken was created in mid-2018 and promised high yield investment returns at different rebate percentages to its four tiers of member — a classic Ponzi scheme structure. By early 2019, the project claimed to have over 10 million members.

and in this other article talk about 2.9 billion:

The largest single incident of loss cited by CipherTrace is the PlusToken scheme, which purportedly defrauded users and investors of $2.9 billion.

Well, as I don't see the news channels posting details about how everything is going, so it is very difficult to comment on this case, only if someone is a journalist who is following the investigation will have more information about this case, and the crypto journalists are not investigative journalists, they just copy/paste announcements from other sources

[Carlton Banks]

Is anyone following this story and worried?

nope

[dantee1]

It's really sad the level of fraud people are committing with Bitcoin. How come they were able to pull off scam on over 10 million investors?

On June 27, 2019, a handful of leaders for a wildly popular ponzi scheme that spread across Asia were arrested by Chinese authorities after they managed to fleece unwitting customers out of roughly $3 billion.

PlusToken, as it was called, promised its “investors” monthly returns of anywhere from 10 to 30 percent in its eponymous token (PLUS), which traded on such popular exchanges as Huobi and Bithumb. This attracted more than 200,000 bitcoin (1 percent of the outstanding supply, or the entirety of the Winklevi’s bitcoin holdings), 789,000 ether and 26 million EOS. As of this report, the ringleader of the operation is still at large and funds are still on the move.
Mugshots of the six arrested team members.

The racket reeks of the same chicanery and unrealistic promises of returns as the Ponzi scheme tied to now-defunct BitConnect, though to a drastically escalated scale. At its peak, BitConnect was only worth just north of $121 million. PlusToken, trading publicly across a number of popular Chinese exchanges, achieved a $17 billion valuation. With an all-time high of $340 a token, this would have made it the third-largest asset on CoinMarketCap if it were listed.

More details at:- https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/how-the-plustoken-scam-absconded-with-over-1-percent-of-the-bitcoin-supply

[Carlton Banks]

It's really sad the level of fraud people are committing with Bitcoin.

the evidence that this company owned any BTC was falsified. maybe they do, but the evidence needs to be something a 10 year old kid couldn't fake, especially when there's talk of thousands of BTC

[Sexaphiliac]

This is circumstantial at best, there is no direct linking between Plus token and the transferred BTC unless the wallet address can be confirmed as belonging to Plus token. Even though the cryptocurrency market continues to experience losses through exit scams, it is only appropriate that people perform due diligence before making such speculation.

[wattcrypto]

Here they say 3 billion:

10 million investors scammed of $3 billion

As Wan outlines, PlusToken was created in mid-2018 and promised high yield investment returns at different rebate percentages to its four tiers of member — a classic Ponzi scheme structure. By early 2019, the project claimed to have over 10 million members.

and in this other article talk about 2.9 billion:

The largest single incident of loss cited by CipherTrace is the PlusToken scheme, which purportedly defrauded users and investors of $2.9 billion.

Well, as I don't see the news channels posting details about how everything is going, so it is very difficult to comment on this case, only if someone is a journalist who is following the investigation will have more information about this case, and the crypto journalists are not investigative journalists, they just copy/paste announcements from other sources

I just checked their report from their website and it says $2.9 billion in crypto assets. Not sure why the other article raises the number. https://ciphertrace.com/q2-2019-cryptocurrency-anti-money-laundering-report/

[yesyes18]

This id what happens when countries ban Bitcoin and investors try to find ways to get into the game. Should China not pose that harsh ban on bitcoin, the investments would've been distributed and many regulated agencies would've kept people's money in custody, but these fraudsters have pulled them off. it's so so sd to hear such things.

[premiumgifts]

this is insane! if this is true it would definitely be the biggest exit scam i have seen

[akeegan]

Could companies like Ciphertrace potentially help those funds get returned to those scammed?

[ccryptopark]

Could companies like Ciphertrace potentially help those funds get returned to those scammed?

Was wondering the same thing actually. If they can prove who stole the funds are they able to return them to the rightful owners?

[nutildah]

Well, turns out we should have been worried!

I would merit OP but he hasn't logged in for a long time.

Its hard to believe that whatever PlusToken had left could drag down the market this far, but I'm willing to believe its a combination of things that led to a perfect storm for bitcoin (and crypto), so to speak.

The cycle works something like this (outside of any pre-existing stock market based woes):

1. Ponzi BTC get dumped en masse on the market at any 'ol price
2. A massive downward movement liquidates several leveraged positions, lowering the price even more
3. Institutional investors see their profits being eaten into and sell their coins and/or de-leverage their positions
4. Average investors panic and sell their coins
5. More positions are liquidated
6. Buyers re-emerge thinking we have hit bottom
7. Repeat, until all BTC is dumped.

That's how a relatively small amount of coins (though they did have 1% of the total BTC supply at the height of the scam) can cause so much damage when sold all at once.

[meanwords]

-snip

Wow, didn't see this thread last year . I was also surprise to think that this was taken into an account by OP and no one bats an eye to it. Even a legendary member wasn't worried last year. Apparently the moment they started moving their funds, they started selling bit by bit in august too until the massive dump of -+13,000 BTC. Bitcoin market really didn't took a hit this time like 2018.

[pooya87]

i tried looking into it but i got bored very fast. there is a lot of false information that the media is throwing around about this scam but in my view it doesn't seem any different from thousands of similar scams that have been happening in the past couple of years.
it is mostly being hyped up with exaggerated numbers these days because price has gone down and they are looking for reasons to spread more and more FUD.

[nutildah]

i tried looking into it but i got bored very fast. there is a lot of false information that the media is throwing around about this scam but in my view it doesn't seem any different from thousands of similar scams that have been happening in the past couple of years.
it is mostly being hyped up with exaggerated numbers these days because price has gone down and they are looking for reasons to spread more and more FUD.

I know you're not a big fan of Chainalysis but they put the number of BTC collected at around 200,000, which is quite a bit. However, they recently said that the last move down to $3850 probably wasn't due to PlusToken as they have yet to move their remaining stash to exchanges... This was 3 days ago, so who knows how things have progressed since then.

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/plustoken-scam-bitcoin-price

Things could actually get worse if they decide to slam the market with this last batch of BTC.