Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it Up to $3.6bn in Bitcoin has disappeared from a South African cryptocurrency investment outfit as well as the two brothers who ran it. Africrypt, led by founder and CEO Raees Cajee and his sibling and COO Ameer, claimed two months ago it had been hacked and had to halt its operations. The biz also urged its investors – said to …
Whether you trust cryptocurrencies or not, it's usually not a good idea to invest in places where people offer you massive increases and don't show you how it's done. I hope that those who were defrauded can get something back once the thieves are found, but it should also serve as a warning that investment opportunities need diligent investigation before you hand over any money (let alone large chunks of it).
>>need diligent investigation before you hand over any money
People didn't do their investigation with Tulips, didn't do it with South Sea slaves, won't do it now. The world keeps turning.
Fools are parted from their money and the unscrupulous make a mint... I try to avoid being part of the former, and hope I will never be part of the later, not much else one can do as individual.
You'll note Trump personally did just fine. While he's not anywhere near as wealthy as he claims, he continues to live the high life while his businesses fail. Essentially that is his business: fleecing investors and creditors.
He's not particularly skilled at it, either. He's a bully who has some innate skill at duping certain types of people, and he has a pretty decent team of lawyers and accountants, and he has enough political capital to have made prosecutors and regulators somewhat reluctant to go after him in the past. His luck is likely to run out eventually.
And there are plenty of cases where people with financial training and expertise fell for obvious scams. There was a case some years back in Michigan where the treasurer of a corporation embezzled a bunch of money and sent it to a 419-style scammer.
People are bad at evaluating risk and they're bad at making rational economic decisions.
Not a new problem. There's an Edgar Wallace story from 1925 about an "investment scheme" that paid around 12% to investors for a couple of years. Then they were invited to meet with the scheme providers and quietly murdered. A Ponzi scheme with extras. This, although bad enough, is not quite in that league.
The alternative is that they've got so much that they regard it as a chump change investment that might pay dividends, but equally might lose completely. Bit like less well off people buying a lottery ticket; reason says you're not going to win, hence just throwing your money away, but the tiny chance keeps people playing.
A Euro-lottery ticket cost about the same as an ice-cream. I get a certain reward from the ice-cream (tastes ok), but it still goes to waist (so to say), so by no means a 100% positive outcome. If I instead buy a lottery ticket there is a small (tiny but not *quite* zero) chance of being able to retire *now*.
As a minimum outcome I have a very slightly better health, at a maximum I can spend the rest of my life on what I would like (wilderness trips, mostly, even if MSF etc would benefit as well). That is the only case I can see when the lottery ticket is a good way to spend money.
That only works if you consider the only alternative of buying the ticket as buying the ice cream and if you really value the ice cream at that level. Someone who has other things that money could buy, in whole or in part, or someone who just likes ice cream more than you do, is unlikely to work on that logic.
True, but average in typical usage also doesn't necessarily refer to the mean. When not talking about mathematics, average usually represents something that is representative of the middle of the range and the commonly observed value, so I would hazard a guess that most common usages mix median and mode and leave the mean alone. It's really not that strange to expect its usage to correlate more with median.
Surely anyone who has made a mint enough to invest big in this, is smart enough to see an offer like this and just dismiss it instantly?
Many people come into money through avenues that require no ability to gauge risk or understand probability or economics.
Empirically, vast amounts of evidence shows that a great many people with money to invest will invest it poorly.
10% interest per day should multiply wealth by a factor of about 1283 trillion (1.283 * 10^16) each year.
Those guys have probably secretly paid (at a premium) for the extra two seats on the one way Blue Horizon trip later this year and will be living it up on Mars, out of the reach of regulators and anti-trust investigators for the rest of their rich & joyous lives.
They'll need to get to Northern Cyprus, that has no diplomatic status, so no extradition treaties. Or Russia, where they might not extadite you.
Does Ronnie Biggs' trick still work in Brasil? Get someone pregnant and spend loads of money, so they won't kick the father of a citizen out - until the cash runs out of course.
However, that's the law sorted. If some of the investors are of a less pleasant persuasion - then hiding from the authorities may be the least of their worries. In which case, a considerable amount of that cash is going to get spent on running. Then again, a billion or three is a considerable amount of money to hide with. It's just that getting it out of Bitcoin and into real, spendable money, is going to leave tracks - and be difficult.
It's possible, of course, that some less-pleasant investor has already taken action, and the brothers haven't fled anywhere. That's always a risk when you run a big con, and we're talking (US) billions of USD here.
I wouldn't try to guess which is the more probable case – that they took the money and legged it, or someone took them out of the picture.
I read an article on Bloomberg where some old traders are loving cryptocurrency because they're able to bust out tricks from 30 years ago that don't work any more in modern commodity markets due to their efficiencies - but exist in crypto exchanges.
Not sure why your Madoff reference reminded me of this story, other than the fact that big Bernie also pioneered Payment for Order Flow, which is the method by which most brokerage firms today can offer commission-free trades (eg: Robinhood, etcetera)
"been run through Bitcoin mixers and tumblers [...] exchanges were on the look out for any signs of anyone trading the coins"
I'm assuming that a mixed & tumbled bitcoin is 100% untraceable, technologically speaking.
Might the investigators somehow have knowledge regarding the newly mixed coins?
More likely that they're looking for signs of the perps being greedy or stupid when it comes to cashing in / keeping their mouths shut / not spending silly amounts of money. That's what happens in pretty much every heist movie ever, anyway.
I always enjoy the shock-horror newspaper reaction to the way thieves spend their ill-gotten gains.
It's usually along the lines of 'spent the money on expensive cars, a new house, holidays abroad and designer handbags.' Gasp choke!!
When I rob a bank/footballer/charity/ I spend the money on sherbet-dabs and cheesy wotsits. Nothing to tip off the authorities there. Although I do now need a new warehouse or two to store the rather bulky cheesy wotsits in.
A tumbler takes multiple people's bitcoins, bundles them together, splits them up again ( in differing amounts to the inputs ) and sends them back to the inputters second wallet.
This used to stop the police from tracing them, but now law enforcement have software to work it all out.
That's why bitcoin is being phased out of darkweb transactions.
Also in a tumbler, the only people you're tumbling with are likely to be drug dealers, so if your money came from a tumbler, you're painting a target on yourself as a dodgy character regardless of where your money really came from.
a dodgy character regardless of where your money really came from
A quicky online search shows that there are a number of Swiss bitcoin exchanges. I expect it would be possible to trade the $2b or so in (de-valued) bitcoin for something a bit more "depositable" in a Swiss bank account, and hide your money the same way that "a dodgy character" would have done it over the last century or so.
I'm not saying that Swiss authorities could not somehow trace that it was done, or where the perps were when they did it, but once it becomes hard cash and gets deposited in a bank in Switzerland, it may become extremely difficult to trace.
Similarly for Caiman Islands and other "hide your money" places around the world.
However, like many have already mentioned, crooks make mistakes and that's how they get caught.
Any global bounty hunters out there looking for a reward to catch them? I'm sure the investors wouldn't mind forking over a percentage to get the rest of their money back.
"However, like many have already mentioned, crooks make mistakes and that's how they get caught."
...and these crooks are aged 17 and 21. They think they are indestructible but they've not been alive long enough to have gained much, if any, wisdom. I suspect they'll be found sooner rather than later.
I'm assuming that a mixed & tumbled bitcoin is 100% untraceable, technologically speaking.
It is safer to assume that someone like the NSA or Chinese Intelligence can easily "unwind" those permanent, unalterable, transaction records, sitting right on the Internet, using only a fraction of their ressources. The "untraceability" of Bitcoin lies, IMO, in the fact that the TLA's mostly doesn't care*.
However, 4 Billion is a big incentive. Some people one definitively does not want to meet up with can probably also do it!?
*) I think some TLA designed bitcoin in order to get a "mapping" of criminals, their money flows, and their contacts / conduits to the "normal world", and then use some of them for whatever TLA's need people for.
The old pictures of a "bit of tart on the side" doesn't work, being gay is nothing, and so on, so a new recruitment method was neeeded. Bitcoin is the prototype.
It is safer to assume that someone like the NSA or Chinese Intelligence can easily "unwind" those permanent, unalterable, transaction records, sitting right on the Internet, using only a fraction of their ressources
I have no idea what this might actually mean, but if you do, I'd like to hear an actual argument for it. And by "an actual argument" I don't mean "the NSA is magic".
There are many flaws in Bitcoin and in every other cryptocurrency I've looked at. But handwaving arguments about them do no one any good.
I'm assuming that a mixed & tumbled bitcoin is 100% untraceable, technologically speaking.
Might the investigators somehow have knowledge regarding the newly mixed coins?
The Cambridge Computer Crime Center (or whatever they're called – the group Ross Anderson used to run before he went to Edinburgh) had significant success tracing Bitcoin flows through laundering processes using FIFO heuristics. They had a paper on it a few years back.
"I'm assuming that a mixed & tumbled bitcoin is 100% untraceable, technologically speaking."
And you assume wrong. It's not untraceable, just harder. A lot easier in fact than tracing laundered cash.
Here's how it works:
Wallet A (known used by fraudster): Transfers 12345 coins to wallet B.
Wallet B (probably still the fraudster): Transfers 593 to wallet C, 268 to wallet D, 926 to wallet E, ...
Wallet C: Frequently receives payments from wallets and sends out others, but never the same amounts. Received 593 from wallet B, also sent 183 to wallet K, 83 to wallet L, 26 to wallet M, 103 to wallet N, ...
Probably, some or all of wallets K, L, M, and N are controlled by the fraudster. Unfortunately, you don't know that for certain so you have to track them all until you see an exchange.
That's it. You can watch the movements of Bitcoin and trace who did what. You just have to break the pseudonymity of the wallets. Likely all clients of wallet C are criminals anyway, so you don't have to worry too much about the other people you will be tracking.
That can help, but you will lose more in exchange fees and, assuming you eventually want to get cash, Bitcoin is easier to cash out than Monero is. Even then, you can figure out that they've done that. It's not perfect, but that doesn't make the "technically untraceable" statement correct.
The pro way is the legal way - run it through a couple of LLP's.
Someone lobbied to have the "Limited Liability Partnership", a specific company structure where one does not have to publicly establish the controlling interest. A letterstuck behind the drawers of some lawyer acting on behalf of the LLP is good enough.
I would assume the people lobbying for and crafting this legislation knew what they were doing and why, much better than the coin-bro's.
To be fair, a tech company run by a 17 and 21 year old with billions of other people's money is exactly the target organised crime would go for.
And with those rewards, they might not be too squeamish about how they did it. Computer hacking isn't the only way of doing this stuff: good old-fashioned finger hacking would do the trick too.
Exactly. And even the "We got hacked" story isn't implausible. It's not hard to believe a couple of kids running a scam would have poor IT security and OPSEC. Then they could have scampered to escape the wrath of their investors, or been done in by them.
It's clear this "investment" was a sham. It's not clear how the house of cards came down; there are just too many plausible scenarios.
It's also not hard to believe that their personal security would be woefully (for a very short time) inadequate. A quick kidnapping; gentle persuasion and instant disposal would produce viable candidates for the disappearance of both themselves and the bitcoins giving more time for the perps to permanently poke off.
It's a lot of money - so it's a lot of incentive.
It's already difficult to move money from your bank into or out of any of the major Bitcoin etc. exchanges.
They're not stupid, they know what's coming.
When I withdrew the last dregs of my Bitcoin, I had to do so by sending it to a third-party website who sent me an Amazon voucher... well dodgy! But it worked out.
Trying to withdraw to my full-validated, only UK bank account as a UK citizen, the transactions were just automatically refused. And I remember years ago when I was trying to buy them and credit card / debit card were refused at the bank end, not the other end.
My original Bitcoins were obtained by a third-party escrow site where you give the site £50 and then someone later sends you some Bitcoin and you confirm the transaction, then they release the money. Because the people selling Bitcoins have to use dodgy third-party means and were jumping onto anything like PingIt or any new service as soon as they launched to get there before they caught onto how they were using it.
I'm not sure how people are trading in cryptocurrencies for cash, to be honest, at least in the UK. It's quite a tricky thing to do, and far from anonymous. It's entirely reliant on taking a risk on unknown, and pretty untraceable, third-parties, companies registered in the Cayman Islands, etc.
If you want to trade in crypto, do it via an investment vehicle of some kind. You still make the money, but they take all the risk. Well, most of the risk. There's still a risk that one day what they're doing will collapse because of some new money-laundering rule, but at least you stand a chance of getting some of your money back. I wouldn't invest in Bitcoin etc. directly in this day and age.
If you do that, you lose whatever perceived benefits crypto might have.
Crypto *has no benefits*, other than buying illegal stuff online and getting put in a database over it.
The only reason to "invest" in crypto is to match the hype and meet Volatility targets for ones portfolio.
SAXO Bank (of course) offers CFD's (Contracts for Difference) wich strips away all of the crypto bullshit hassle and leaves pure Volatility, that stuff that one actually wanted to have. Totally legit and easy to do.
I'm not sure how people are trading in cryptocurrencies for cash, to be honest, at least in the UK.
Find vendor who accepts payment via BitPay. Transfer cryptocurrency to BitPay. Pay vendor. Receive goods. BitPay also convert various crypto into vouchers for Amazon, major supermarkets, etc. I've not tried that route, but can confirm that it works with vendors who accept BitPay (e.g. Pimoroni)
I've got some money to invest.
I'm approached by a company called Africrypt, run by a 21 year old kid and his seventeen year old brother, who promise me up to 10% PER DAY returns, because cryptocurrency.
Why wouldn't I invest with them? Sounds pretty good to me.
Talk about a fool and his money...
True, but you've got to hand it to them. On face value, this is one of, if not the largest theft in history, and it was done by two kids. Over a billion each! Laundering it is going to be a problem, sure, but even if they have to lose 50% doing so it makes them the two of the most successful criminals in history.
Even if you have to lose 99% through the laundry, that still leaves you with $10 million.
"The easiest way to become a millionaire? Well, just start out with a billion."
By the way, if you lose 99% in the laundering I would go and see if there's some still stuck in the drain sieve. Must be a couple of million easily.
Honestly, $10m isn't that much if you have to survive for the rest of your life on it, especially if you are still a teenager.
While it is certainly far more than most teenagers have, realistically, you are still going to have to work for a living, but the $10m could help with that, a lot.
Do the math.
If you allocate yourself a budget of $5000 a month, one million lasts you 20 years - and that's without interest.
You tell me how you're going to lead a normal life and spend $5K per month. Obviously, you can forget owning a Ferrari, a yacht, having your entrance to the Lion's Club, or anything else fancy and socialite. Well, you don't have that now, do you ? Why would you need that simply because your bank account is stuffed to the gills ? Does that change you in any way ? No. It does not.
95% of lottery winners end up riddled with debt, because they confuse having money with having changed social status. If you have never had an interest in sailing, winning $10 million at a lottery does not justify your buying a yacht.
The only thing money is good for is to remove your problems. If you have money and you have problems, you don't understand what money is for.
Money is not for creating more problems. If you have more money than you can spend, you're fine. Stop trying to find excuses to spend more money.
Money is not for creating more problems. If you have more money than you can spend, you're fine. Stop trying to find excuses to spend more money.
From the perspective of societal good, this is the exact problem with capitalism.
If you have vast sums of money, and hold onto it, it means that money is taken out of the economy and the supply is reduced. There's slightly less to go around for everyone else, and less taxation to fund public services. This harms everyone.
If, however, you spaff it all on yachts, that money goes back into the economy. The agent takes his cut, pays taxes on it, and spends it to pay for food and bills. The yacht builders pay their employees, pay income taxes and national insurance contributions, buy other goods and services, and so on. The money continues to circulate in the economy. The government gets their cut, so there is money for rubbish collections, road maintenance, pandemic vaccination programmes, armed forces, and so on.
Once you get people hoarding personal wealth on a scale similar to a country's GDP, you have a problem.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with saving for a rainy day, saving up to buy a house, etc. but you have to ask how many zeroes on the end of those savings are necessary to insulate yourself against the unforeseen and how many are just down to pure avarice at everyone else's expense.
"If you have vast sums of money, and hold onto it, it means that money is taken out of the economy"
If you keep it in a coffer at home, maybe.
If you keep it at a bank, nope, the bank will loan it to their customers.
Actually, they can loan about 50 times as much, it varies depending on the country.
Yes, but if you go to the bank and say, "I'd like a loan to buy a super-yacht," or even, "I'd like a loan to pay my rent / pay employees / buy food," they first thing they'll ask is how you intend to pay it back, before laughing you out of the room. Yes, our economy is based in large part on the circulation of debt, but a lot of people will see that as a problem, not a great selling point. Just take a look at every major financial crash in recent history for a lesson in why.
That system works, because banks make loans that they think people will be able to afford to repay, or at least pay the interest on.
Large loans are typically "secured", for example, if you have a mortgage, it is secured on your house. If you default, the bank gets the house, as well as any repayments you've already made.
Now, arguably, a bank might secure a loan on a yacht with the yacht itself, but they'll probably look at the rate of depreciation on that yacht, which, unlike property, is unlikely to go up in value, and do the maths, and work out that if you defaulted after your first payment, and they repossessed it, they'd probably only get 40% of the value back. If they were in the business of giving loans for yachts, and there were enough customers out there, they might amortise that risk by charging a high rate of interest to cover the defaults, on the assumption of a certain rate of defaults, but they'd probably decide that the risks were too variable, and go into a safer business. So yes, if you walked into a bank and asked for an unsecured loan on an expensive veblen good like a yacht, or a "luxury" watch, they would either laugh at you or try to fleece you for an interest rate that rivals a pay-day loan company.
Have you ever thought that if you are so inexperienced as to the world ( ie: you don't know that banks want to give loans to people ) then why are you so sure of your opinions on it?
It is pretty worrying that opportunistic political parties want to give the vote to 16 year olds.
Banks want to give loans to people who can afford to pay them back, plus interest.
If you can't pay, they won't give the loan. That's what "credit ratings" are for - a way of establishing whether a person is likely to repay a loan or not.
Banks actually want to give out loans that people can only just afford, so they can get the maximum profit in interest payments, without the payee defaulting. Once someone defaults, they have to either write the debt off, sell it to a debt collection agency, or try to get it back via the civil courts. After a certain time, it gets statutory barred, and if the person who took out the loan has managed to evade the bailiffs and debt collectors, they walk away.
$5K per month doesn't go far in most of the US. My household net income is ... considerably ... above that, and while we're wealthy compared to most of humanity or even most households in the state, we still have to budget.
And, no, we don't have any yachts.
$10M would be a nice nest egg. In the US, you'd still need a job, or be married to someone who has one, if only for the medical insurance. And in many parts of the US you'd likely want more income than just the interest off that investment.
Of course this is all in response to an implausible hypothetical. Assuming the BTC in question haven't been lost, and that they're gradually cashed out, I expect the holders can net considerably more than $20M.
You could buy an annuity that would easily generate twice that amount per month. There are stable REITs that would provide triple that return monthly.
Maybe you don't live like a king but you can certainly make enough to never work again.
Maybe not London or New York but plenty of places in the world.
95% of lottery winners end up riddled with debt
This sort of statistic is trotted out over and over. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Not everyone is Viv Nicholson.
Last time something like this was mentioned, I did a bit of research. In 2017, something like 82% of the UK lottery winners were better off or the same as they were before they won. That means 18% were worse off. Not exactly 95% riddled with debt.
...but even if they have to lose 50% doing so it makes them the two of the most successful criminals in history.
I think you'll find, that once such sums are involved, these people are no longer considered to be criminals.
What, you think all those multi-millionaires and billionaires out there are squeaky clean and got their money by being super hard-working and good at their jobs? Hahahaha.
Surely this story shows the futility of crypto? Despite being peddled as incredibly secure system and the best currency since ... err ... currency ... there are so many of these very large scams reported that the inherent security of such systems must be in question ... yet isn't questioned by the political masters. The supposedly untraceable nature of transactions makes it all the worse (even if a Nigerian prince moves in to 37 Coleridge Close, Climthorpe, nice semi with one garage and 5 Lambourghinis, who's to say that should be regarded as crypto-suspicious as it may simply be the result of a normal email scam campaign.)
If a banking system had this many large intrusions it would be almost instantly shut down (eg Bearings) yet cryptos keep on starting up and running and failing ... Who has their fingers deep enough in this pie to stop the authorities stamping on this all over the world? China are the only financial power to take action (but that may arguably be for the wrong reasons).
Not really.
Here in South Bananistan there were already several scams like that -- small companies no one ever heard about promised 30% interest per month on crypto money. Lots of simple folks fell for that -- some selling cars, borrowing fiat money, emptying their savings to invest. Then, oh no! according to the financial experts in those companies something happened with the algorithmic trading cosine deframbulation module, and the money was locked, but they will return it as soon as possible, trust us. Then the financial experts sort of disappeared.
There were some stories on the news, some interviews with a poor ol' grandma who gave her retirement fund to her unemployed grandson, and at the time lots of alerts on the lines of "don't fall for this".
Some months later, more reports from the same scam with a different company name. More reports on gullible people who wanted to get rich quickly ("but they told me that theirs was different!"). This time some of the people who fell for the scam were advised by some church leaders (the same ones that ask for money to ensure eternal salvation).
Stupid people will always want to get rich quickly, and they don't care for any opinion that is outside of their Facebook and/or Church bubbles. So there will always be opportunities for scammers. Crypto is a very good medium for that -- most people don't know what it is, but it is worth millions.
For related fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telexfree
That's not why Barings got shut down. It collapsed because they essentially allowed a single trader to make a bunch of long-shot bets with more money than they had to back them with. No "intrusions", as such, and it wasn't "shut down" by any authorities, it folded due to insolvency.
This particular story sounds like a run-of-the-mill "get rich quick" scam. They sued the word "crypto" in there, but there's nothing to indicate that this was the nature of the scam, except that when the perps ran off with the cash, it was in the form of Bitcoin, rather than a suitcase full of high-denomination notes, or bearer bonds, or frozen orange juice futures, or whatever.
Bitcoin itself might turn out to be a massive investment bubble, but this fraud isn't related to that.
To compare to another famous bubble, this is like a couple of guys telling everyone that they could get rich, if they only give them money to buy a load of tulips, buying a load of tulips with that money, and then rather than waiting to see if the price goes up, just running off with them, selling them, and keeping all the money. Hell, there might not even be any tulips involved, or only just enough to string the "investors" along by waving a bag of bulbs in their faces to encourage them to part with more money, and get their friends in on the act.
They will probably live in a state of constant fear, worrying that the slightest mistake will expose who they are - and knowing that a lot of very pissed off people will be very interested in having them tracked down, with permanent disappearance the likely result. Would you trust your 17 year old brother not to do something stupid and get noticed because he suddenly had unlimited wealth? At their age they will not have thought this plan through very well, and they're probably already at the "shit, what do we do now" stage.
I wonder what lifestyle these days could be discretely maintained with a mystery source of money?
Set up a Patreon to finance my travel blog and then siphon in some money from my ill-gotten gains each month (and naturally be a good person and pay my taxes)? Or is that all easy to trace credit cards? Move somewhere where prostitution is legal and claim that I make a living as the worlds least attractive male prostitute (cash transaction, pay my taxes)? There Must Be A Way[TM]
If I could manufacture the 100% water-tight evidence I could claim to have bought a few $100 worth of bitcoin in 2010 or so and forgot about them until recently. But that is a big if if someone goes digging.
Kebab shop. One of those shops where the food is completely inedible, the opening hours are weird for a "post pub nosh" type place, nobody ever seems to go there in the first place, the staff is always rude and annoyed with customers, etc. Buying the cheapest ingredients possible and just dump it out end of the night every night, yet make massive cash profits. You know, exactly the way many drug dealers are now laundering their ill gotten gains.
In many towns in the UK there are Christian Book Shops where no-one enters or leaves. We had one in the last town I lived in and you could see it from the pub garden and in three months no-one won the free pint for spotting someone going in that I put up. I decided they must be money laundering shops.
If you do not mind living in a 3rd world country where paying off politicians keeps you out of trouble, $1b each would probably go a VERY long way. Buy your own compound, or your own island, hire locals as guards in a paramilitary kind of way, private airstrip and aircraft, ship things in from all over the world, and so on.
Several nations in the equatorial and south pacific region come to mind, as do many Latin American countries. Even Cuba. And since they're from Africa, perhaps a few places on THAT continent wouldn't mind having them, either.
As in the now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International, was a bank that took around $4 Billion, was 'managed' from overseas and suddenly went bankrupt with huge debts (i.e. lots of creditors). I believe that the money and the miscreants were never found. I suspect that it was set up as a scam in the first place, although of course I cannot prove it, and should anyone who managed it come forward and disprove that theory I will humbly apologise.
(I should also state that I had a BCCI credit card, and owed about £156.00 on it at the time of the collapse. I did offer to pay up, but that was declined, and there being no actual way to pay, actually came out a slightly embarrassed winner.)
I must say that I'd be somewhat wary of a company where the COO is 17 years old, but then I suppose I shouldn't be ageist.
I had some cash in a small credit and loan organisation that went bust and I received my money from the government bank compensation scheme. Then two years later the company was re-booted and my account re-filled. I'm waiting to see how long it is before someone notices or its a really really really rainy day,
I think legally you have to tell them, or you are technically committing fraud.
I think the standard form, for when a financial institution makes a mistake in your favour, is to write them a letter, either sent by recorded post, or asking for a confirmation of receipt, telling them that they have made a mistake. No need to tell them it's in your favour, and if they don't respond, the money is legally yours.
IANAL so don't take this as bona fide legal advice!
Every time a cryptofool uses “fiat currency” as a pejorative on here, it makes me giggle. Totally unregulated, instantly transferrable anywhere in the world? It sounds great for MY purposes, but you have to consider that the rest of humanity’s flotsam is also similarly attracted to it, and they’ve got very different standards than you and me.
The lack of regulation does make cryptocurrencies very much a "Wild West" situation, and you do have to assume every other player is a bad actor, unless proven otherwise.
However, whenever I see a comment like this, I feel compelled to ask how that is different to, for instance, the US Dollar, the favoured currency of black-market arms and drugs dealers worldwide?
Would any of the funds entering a Bitcoin mixer and tumbler setup be legit? I could see some law enforcement agency descending on such an operation, inviting them to show where some specific Bitcoins had gone or be charged with involvement in the crime(s) concerned. A court might well decide that all the funds in such an operation are entirely the fruits of criminal enterprise and therefore, subject to seizure.
It happens, some people actually run mixers out of jurisdictions with regulators that are interested.
https://www.coindesk.com/eu-authorities-crack-down-on-bitcoin-transaction-mixer
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ohio-man-arrested-for-running-bitcoin-mixing-service-that-laundered-300-million/
While using a mixer is not in itself illegal, there is basically no reason to do so other than hiding criminal revenues. A legal action is likely to succeed if they can actually do it. Unfortunately, it's not easy to do it because it doesn't require much to operate a mixer--it can be done by software and does not require any physical interaction. It's therefore possible to operate it in a country which doesn't investigate such crimes or to simply hide where the computers doing the work really are.
This dodgy crypto-coin was originated 3 years ago (2019) by a couple of teenagers, according to the article.
The victims, (formerly rich) folks, invested in a lemon-aid stand selling magic coins not a beverage.
I gotta say though, those two children must have big cojones. Assuming they are still alive.
Yup they should have been suspicious being promised 10% daily returns (as first poster and many have said.)
Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, higher volatility means high and fast potential gains, but also faster potential losses (and the potential to make 0 if the money is sitting but not being actively traded.) Indeed if these people were promised any particular level of profit they should have run straight away.
Also, you'd hope some of these people would do due diligence to realize they do not have to take their money to some magic startup to roll the dice on cryptocurrency, there are forex traders who got bored with the relative stability of currency trading and have applied their techniques to crypto trading. If you want to invest in crypto without watching over it yourself, you do not have to take your money to some magic crypto startup, there are conventional investors who are happy to professionally* invest your money in crypto.
*Crypto in general, due to the high volatility, is really above the risk levels professionals typically take. But they will apply their hard-earned professional techniques and experience they use to eek out profits from some 1% price difference in forex, to try to make and hold profits in crypto, so they're likely to be better at it than a lot of randos who just go on and trade some currencies around.
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