The Ezhou Court has convicted 34 individuals for operating a fraudulent cryptocurrency platform, OURBIT Digital Currency Trading Platform, which deceitfully siphoned off approximately 460 million yuan (around £54 million) from nearly 30,000 unsuspecting investors within just a year.
Masquerading as a Singapore-registered exchange with fictitious U.S. and U.K. licenses, the platform was exposed as a complete sham designed solely to defraud users.
The fabricated platform boasted of advanced trading features such as “zero slippage” and innovative “stop-profit and stop-loss functions” alongside live trading charts supposedly synchronised with the Bitcoin market, none of which were real.
The scammers went as far as simulating nine cryptocurrency trading pairs using counterfeit data to create the illusion of a functioning exchange, entirely disconnected from actual crypto markets.
Deception permeated through the operation with the fraudsters portraying themselves as seasoned trading ‘teachers’ within WeChat groups.
They posted fictitious profit screenshots to lure investors with the promise of easy returns. The scheme was deeply hierarchical; at the helm, the OURBIT team was segmented into product, technology, and business operations divisions.
The business operations wing distributed fake crypto accounts to agents who then recruited sub-agents to rope in new investors, all sharing in the ill-gotten gains.
The elaborate scam involved not just faked trading experiences but also manipulated account functions where user balances and transactions were routinely interfered with to ensure losses.
When users began making significant profits, the platform would either freeze their accounts or ban them outright. In some instances, agents duped victims into depositing more funds to ‘unlock’ their frozen assets, only to steal those as well.
Upon careful examination of the fraudulent activities, the Ezhou Court determined that the platform was explicitly engineered to misappropriate funds from users.
The court delivered verdicts ranging from three to twelve years of imprisonment for the defendants, alongside imposing fines.
Highlighting the perils of the unregulated cryptocurrency market, the court also issued a public warning, underlining that crypto trading lacks the legal protections afforded to traditional financial transactions in China.
This case was presented as a stark reminder of the risks associated with high-return schemes, particularly in the crypto space, which often turn out to be sophisticated scams.
The judge implored the public to dismiss the allure of quick riches promoted through social media and stay prudent with their financial choices, especially when it involves investments in the highly volatile and largely unregulated cryptocurrency market.
The court emphasized that once deceived, the chances of recovering lost funds are slim, advising potential investors to remain vigilant and thoroughly scrutinize any investment opportunities.
