đģSummary
The Crypto Scammers in London and Beyond
12th January 2023
This report is intended to be read by an investigative journalist willing to uncover a large and sophisticated crypto fraud ring that is still operating today. It is also meant to be read by the tens of thousands of victims that recently got defrauded.
A sophisticated fraud operation started between the 8th of February and the 10th of May 2021. The fraudsters currently work from a co-working space in London, creating fake crypto projects and promoting them online through sponsored guest posts with sensational titles to lure investors into investing in what would always be a failed Initial Coin Offering (Crypto IPO).
The projects would be 100% fictitious. There would be no platform, no development, no codebase, no founders, no employees, and no physical address. After raising millions from the presale stage, the fraudsters would either launch the crypto tokens on Uniswap or PancakeSwap and inject liquidity considerably lower than promised for an enormous number of tokens they would have sold in the presale phase, or drain the liquidity right after the launch. In some cases, the scammers would claim that their contract was compromised by hackers or other entities and that the tokens were either stolen or the hackers minted a large number of tokens and dumped them to drive the price down. This is called a Hard Rug Pull. It's beyond illegal and results in the token price imploding catastrophically.
99% of the money put forward by investors would be stolen by the fraudsters, and they eventually abandon the project, making non-savvy investors think that the project simply failed and leaving them with a huge amount of worthless tokens.
Most investors are unaware that this is a complete scam. Therefore, they assume that they invested in a legitimate but unsuccessful project and thus, give up on asking questions, following up, or investigating.
After the fraudsters finish the scam and the attention dies down, they start all over again under a different brand, team, website, and token name. Rinse and Repeat. This report exposes the entire fraudulent operation of one of these massive scams from start to finish, connecting all the dots and uncovering critical details that may be used to bring the people behind it to justice and recover the stolen money.
Take your time, and read it all. It is eye-popping.
Update: 11th April 2023 As expected, the team behind the scam claimed that their system got compromised, and someone managed to claim and dump a large number of tokens before anyone else, confirming with certainty that this is a scam.
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