Thousands of people who invested in 'iEarnBot', a cryptocurrency trading app, have lost all their savings.
The company investigating the matter has expressed fears that this case of cheating could be one of the biggest crypto scandals ever.
Cryptocurrency trading has become popular with each passing year, promising people high returns on their capital in a short period of time.
However, law enforcement agencies advise investors to be cautious due to increasing fraud in this investment.
I requested a currency withdrawal and my money disappeared
"I lost hundreds of euros when I invested my money through the iEarnBot app," Rozina (pseudonym) from Romania told about the fraud that happened to her.
Rosina requested anonymity for fear of damaging her professional reputation.
"Customers like me who bought cryptocurrencies were told that their investments would be handled by the company's artificial intelligence program and that we were assured of high returns."
According to Rozeena, 'I invested in iEarnBot for a month. The graphics in the app were showing us how our investments were progressing.'
According to Rosina, 'Initially it all seemed quite professional and nice until they announced the repair of the app and then after some time the withdrawal process from the app froze.'
Rosina said that people immediately started expressing concern about this.
'Some people started saying what is happening, why I am not able to withdraw my capital. Seeing all this, I requested to withdraw the currency and at the same time my money disappeared and my portfolio became empty, but the money did not come into my wallet.
iEarnBot was sponsored by the country's information technology expert, Gabriel Garez, and his popularity has led to dozens of important figures in Romania, including government officials and academics, to invest in the app. had gone.
Gabriel Garris says he too fell for the scam of investing his savings in the app and lost all his money.
But Rozina says she would never have considered investing in the app if Gerrys hadn't been involved in its promotion.
'We were at liberty to think that there was no deception in it, but the fact is that there was the name of a trusted teacher in the middle to trust between this company and us, whose presence led us to suspect and scrutinize him. Didn't even think.'
The fraud that took place in Romania in the name of cryptocurrency is neither the first case in Romania nor unusual for the world.
When Silvia Tabasca, a criminologist at the European Center for Legal Education and Research in Romania, began to look for iRanBot, she came to know that many people in many other countries have also been duped by this company. He has sunk his capital in this forgery.
What surprised him the most was the systematic spread of this forgery.
"During the research on this issue, we noticed that the number of investors is quite high. For example, according to the company's claim, they have more than 800,000 users in Indonesia.
According to Sylvia Tabasca, the app works very well at first and when they have enough investors in any one country who have invested their money in it, they are allowed to withdraw that money. They don't give it and they start the same work in another country.'
iEarnBot presents itself as a US-based company with an excellent reputation, but when the BBC's fact-check team checked their website for some information, it came up with red flags ( Red Flag) became clear.
The team never heard about the person whose name appears as the founder of the company on the website, nor did they see his other details, after which a police complaint has also been lodged against the company.
According to the company's claim, companies such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Huawei and Qualcomm work with them as 'strategic partners', but when the BBC sought confirmation from these companies, all of them said that they were using iRanBot. Expressed ignorance about and denied partnership with them.
Their contact information is not provided anywhere on the company's website. When the BBC checked the history of their Facebook page, it was found that as late as 2021, the company account was promoting weight loss products and that the account was operated from Vietnam and Cambodia.
iEarnBot encourages investors in its app to invite more people to join.
According to Sylvia Tabasca, "The way people work in this company is more like a fraudulent 'Ponzi scheme' than a real business."
The BBC also saw messages from iEarnBot customer service claims and chat conversations in which investors were told they would be charged a 30% fee to withdraw their money. I will be obliged to pay.
"Some people were desperate enough to get their money back, even paying huge amounts in fees, but they still couldn't get their deposits back."
The BBC contacted Irnbot several times for his position, but there was no response from him.
Who can be saved from fraudsters only by being aware of the dangers
In some countries such as Nigeria and Colombia, local leaders were pressured by iRanBot patrons to organize various events to encourage people to join the app. These leaders were contacted by Irnbot through the Telegram app.
Andres, a man from Colombia, said he enabled people to join the app and still believed the company was legitimate and not a fraud.
'The i-earn bot is registered in the US which shows that it actually exists.'
Withdrawals were halted in their country in December 2022, and investors were told that the company was shifting their investments to Ibo's new improved coin USDT, which also had the same value. .
According to the company's announcement in Colombia, investors were asked to be patient until March when the new bitcoins were expected to be officially launched in the market, but people are still waiting to access their funds.
"People took loans to invest in it and even invested funds collected for other purposes in this company on the assurance of local leaders. But now because these leaders do not have a satisfactory answer, people are angry. are attached.'
The BBC, with the help of an analyst, was able to identify a key crypto-wallet holder who received payments of around 1.3 million in profits from around 13,000 victims over the course of a year, but did not trace it. Can find out where and to whom that money went.
For investigators, the problem is most obvious.
John Wyman, head of the FBI's new Virtual Assets Unit, calls this a major challenge.
This is a challenge in which on the one hand it is difficult to identify the people behind them and on the other hand the investigative measures according to the law are no less than a test for them. Hence steps should be taken globally to investigate such counterfeiting.
According to John Wyman, "Such investigations require international cooperation and take an incalculable amount of time, but John Wyman urges that all those responsible for this fraud be brought to justice."
"Educating people about the risks of investing can help deter fraud," says John Wyman.
The FBI established the Virtual Assets Unit last year to deal with the growing number of crimes involving virtual currencies.
This unit is designed for online fraud and forgery victims where they can register their complaints on a dedicated page.
But law enforcement agencies have maintained their own way of stopping fraudsters.
John Wyman says, "The most important thing is to be fully informed before you use your savings to invest anywhere, and that's the most important thing." The key to this is that anything that feels right and true is better and often is.