The scams keep going – Pyramid scams have unfortunately adapted very well to the world of cryptocurrencies. Today, it is the leaders of the Ponzi scheme called „WoToken“ who must answer for their actions before the Chinese justice.
Colossal sums of swindled cryptocurrencies
The court in the city of Yancheng, in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, has just rejected the appeal of 4 officials of WoToken , a Ponzi scheme that promised – as usual – totally surreal interest rates .
The 4 individuals promised their investors that their “super” trading bot with a “brilliant” arbitrage algorithm would bring them huge returns . Except, of course, the so-called returns actually came from the poor investors who came after in the pyramid scam, and so on.
The WoToken trap would have closed on 715,249 users in China, according to the crypto-media AMBCrypto which reports the case. The amounts scammed total $ 1.1 billion . In detail, the embezzled cryptocurrencies were:
The prison box awaits WoToken leaders
Of the fortune they stole , only $ 60 million has been recovered so far, first seized by law enforcement, and now confiscated by the Chinese Treasury.
The masquerade of the WOR token and its fake trading platform managed to last from August 2018 to October 2019 .
Their appeal now rejected, the 4 criminals – Gao Yudong, Li Qibing, Wang Xiaoying and Tian Bo – will have to serve sentences ranging from 2.5 to 8.8 years in prison .
Ponzi scams are unlikely to end anytime soon, unfortunately. With the crazy interest rates sometimes offered by decentralized finance, it is more important than ever to be very vigilant . Unrealistic promises of return are much more likely to end up turning into a total loss of capital than into any gain.