The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions (DFI), Securities Division has received a complaint about an alleged cryptocurrency scam ring involving multiple individuals and cryptocurrency trading platforms. The investor invested and subsequently lost approximately $180,000. DFI has not verified the following information.
The investor stated that the alleged scammers:
- Communicated with the investor using LinkedIn, Whats App, and Line.
- Touted their formal education at prestigious business schools in the United States.
- Offered daily afternoon debriefings.
- Shared trading gains via simulated trading apps.
- Offered to teach and show gains while boasting greater than a 90% success.
- Purported to donate 20%-30% of profits to charities yearly.
- Encouraged investors to sell other investments and withdraw 401k plan balances to invest.
- Told the investor that they needed to pay penalties before withdrawing purported investment gains.
- Stated to the investor that their accounts were frozen and the only way to unfreeze the accounts is to deposit more money.
The investor provided the following names of individuals related to their complaint:
- Jing Chen - San Francisco
- Katharine BabyMilo Chen - Beverly Hills
- Ma Qi - Los Angeles
- Ling Ye - Los Angeles
- Baolin Xia (Yvette Ye) - San Francisco
- Wei Ke - Beverly Hills
- Cara Lucci - Los Angeles
The investor also provided the following trading platforms that were used in the alleged scam:
- Sundell-fx.com
- Fx6 app
- Antcoinxds.com/h5
- Coinhakoank.com/h5
- Bitvavo
The investor also provided the wallet addresses that received his funds:
- 0xffa2930558b5904e0d73580e349389fdfc827297
- 0x923EBFEd29fA6fecf8e56e8Dce13f18c40871d39
This appears to be what is commonly called and “Advance Fee Fraud”. More information can be found at: 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)