In Brief:
- Cryptocurrency exchange Binance investigated for $100 Million Dollars scams in Pakistan.
- Binance is the “biggest unregulated virtual currency exchange,” where Pakistanis are putting their money.
- Legal notices are also being sent to social media influencers who are pushing these apps.
Pakistani investors have become the victims of a major bitcoin swindle. According to media sources, Pakistan’s top law enforcement agency has issued a notice to crypto exchange Binance in relation to a scam that cost Pakistanis $100 million.
After receiving many complaints about an ongoing scam that involves investors being duped into transmitting funds from Binance wallets to unknown third-party wallets, the Pakistani government launched a criminal inquiry.
Binance is the “biggest unregulated virtual currency exchange,” where Pakistanis are putting their money.
The FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing has issued an order of attendance to Binance Pakistan’s general manager Hamza Khan to identify the exchange’s link to “fraudulent online investing mobile applications,” according to local reports.
“A relevant questionnaire has also been sent to Binance Headquarters in the Cayman Islands and Binance US to explain the same,” the agency added in a press release.
The inquiry was launched to investigate a series of online investment frauds occurring in Pakistan under the pretext of Ponzi schemes, in which naive investors are promised large returns on their investments if they bring in additional clients, according to the agency.
The FIA claims to have found 26 wallet addresses at Binance that were used to transfer the funds. “A letter has been written to Binance Holdings Limited to provide the details of these blockchain wallet accounts as well as to debit block them,” the agency said, adding that it had also requested supporting documentation and information about the app’s integration with the cryptocurrency trading platform.
“It was discovered throughout the investigation that the fake accounts of various applications, including MCX, HFC, HTFOX, FXCOPY, OKMINI, BB001, AVG86C, BX66, 91fp, and TASKTOK, were associated with Binance wallets,” officials explained. Each had a customer base of 5,000 people on average.
The announcement noted that all members of the group were added to Telegram groups, where expert betting signals on the rise and fall of Bitcoin were issued by the anonymous owner of the application and admins of the Telegram groups.
“Legal notices are also being sent to social media influencers pushing these apps to clarify their point of contact with the apps,” according to the announcement.
Binance’s year hasn’t started well, with rumors that the Ontario Securities Commission had penalized the cryptocurrency exchange for its operations. Regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Germany, and Italy have all had difficulties with Binance.
