The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions (DFI), Securities Division has received a complaint from a Washington resident regarding Efinity.vip, a website claiming to be a cryptocurrency trading platform for the Efinity (EFI) token. While EFI is a virtual currency commonly traded on online currency exchanges, Efinity.vip does not appear to be a legitimate site for trading EFI.
The investor met a woman (“Allie”) through Facebook Dating who supposedly lived in Tokyo. At her request, they moved their conversation to Telegram. After several extended chats about non-investment topics, Allie steered their conversations toward investing. She said she knew of a site, Efinity.vip, where people could make money investing in a new cryptocurrency, EFI. She sent him a link to the site and offered to walk him through the process.
The individual made a small initial investment in EFI. Allie repeatedly encouraged him to invest more, and he ended up investing two more times. After investing a total of $2,800 in EFI, his account purportedly grew to over $6,000 in profit. Eventually, the site’s moderators informed him that he needed to sell his EFI because the coin was going public. They also informed him that before he sold it, he would need to pay the site a 15% tax. The tax was not previously disclosed on the website or to the investor. The investor did not pay the tax and the site refused to return his investment. These allegations have not been verified by DFI.
This complaint contained several other red flags indicating fraud (which have also not been verified by DFI), including:
The site only accepted payments in virtual currency.
The Efinity.vip website consistently changed URLs, including the website Efinity.top.
Allie asked for the investor’s virtual currency wallet address so she could deposit additional cryptocurrency into it.
This appears to be what is commonly called a “Pig Butchering” Scam, which can take many forms, as discussed here: https://dfi.wa.gov/consumer/alerts/top-investor-threats-2023.
Additionally, this appears to include a layer of “Advance Fee Fraud,” which is discussed here: https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/ia_lookforaff.html.
DFI urges consumers to exercise extreme caution before responding to any solicitation offering investment or financial services. Investment professionals need to be licensed with DFI to offer investments to Washington residents. In addition, most investment products sold need to be registered with DFI. To check the licensing status and to find out if there are any complaints against an investment professional or investment product, please visit FINRA Brokercheck (https://brokercheck.finra.org) or contact the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, Securities Division at (360) 902-8760. If you live outside of Washington State, contact your state securities regulator (https://www.nasaa.org/contact-your-regulator/).
If a consumer believes a person or company has violated state law or acted improperly regarding an investment product or service, they may file a formal complaint with the Securities Division (https://dfi.wa.gov/consumers/file-complaint/investor-complaint).
Additional Resources
Virtual Currency, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Assets Information for Consumers (https://dfi.wa.gov/consumers/virtual-currency)
Information regarding investing strategies, investment products, and how to protect yourself from fraud (https://dfi.wa.gov/financial-education/information/investing)
What You Can Do to Avoid Investment Fraud (https://www.investor.gov/protect-your-investments/fraud/how-avoid-fraud/what-you-can-do-avoid-investment-fraud)