LOOTED | Case File 7: PlusToken
2 million victims. 1% of all Bitcoin in existence. And the victims were told they were not victims.
The Promise:
▶️ A crypto wallet with a built-in "arbitrage trading bot"
▶️ Deposit at least $500 worth of crypto, earn attractive daily payouts
▶️ 10% to 30% monthly returns, marketed as risk-free
▶️ Recruit others, climb the levels, earn bigger commissions
▶️ Fake foreign "founders" hired to appear at events so it looked like an international tech company
The Loot:
➡️ Over 2 million participants, mostly China, South Korea, Japan and across Southeast Asia
➡️ Around 14.8 billion yuan (about $2.25 billion) contributed at the time. Peak-value estimates run to $7.6 billion
➡️ Seized: 194,775
$BTC, 833,083
$ETH, 487 million
$XRP, 6 billion
$DOGE, 1.4 million litecoin:native and more
➡️ That Bitcoin alone was about 1% of the entire supply
➡️ Ran from May 2018 until withdrawals died in June 2019
How It Worked:
▶️ There was no arbitrage bot. No trading. The court found no real business at all
▶️ Early payouts came from later deposits. A Ponzi with a wallet app on top
▶️ The scheme minted its own token, PlusCoin, whose supply and price the ringleaders controlled entirely
▶️ Recruitment was the real engine. Village-level agents, WeChat groups, offline seminars
▶️ In January 2019 the ringleader fled to Cambodia and kept running it from there, hiring local staff to pose as the platform's founders
▶️ June 2019: withdrawals stopped. Then the wallets moved, and the market felt it. PlusToken selling pressure is one of the few retail scams big enough to have moved Bitcoin's price
Where It Was Built:
▶️ Origin: China, founded by Chen Bo in 2018
▶️ Operated out of Cambodia, Vanuatu, Vietnam and Malaysia as the founders fled
▶️ 109 people were arrested, 27 of them described as masterminds
Where It Stands Today:
▶️ 15 convicted, sentences of 2 to 11 years, fines from $100,000 to $1 million
▶️ The court ordered all seized crypto forfeited to the national treasury
▶️ Under Chinese law, participants in a pyramid scheme are not classified as victims. They received nothing back, and were told they were fortunate not to be charged themselves
▶️ China now holds roughly 194,000 BTC, second only to the US among state holders. That stack came from victims' deposits
▶️ Reports indicate local governments have used private firms to liquidate seized crypto offshore for cash
Call to Action:
#PlusToken proved that a crypto Ponzi can recruit across Asia, hide across four countries, and still leave its victims with nothing anywhere. There's no founder to name online and no compensation fund. So this call goes global:
▶️
@INTERPOL_HQ @Europol @UNODC: PlusToken was run from China, Cambodia and Vanuatu at the same time. Cross-border crypto Ponzis need joint takedowns before the collapse, not arrests after it
▶️
@FATFNews: seizing crypto is not justice if none of it reaches the people who lost it. Make victim restitution part of the global standard, not just asset forfeiture
▶️
@SECGov @CFTC @TheFCA @SEBI_India
@nsitharaman: "wallet app with a trading bot" schemes are live right now in WhatsApp and Telegram groups worldwide. Issue public warnings the moment they start trending
▶️ South Korea's FSC and Japan's FSA: your citizens were among PlusToken's biggest recruitment pools. Share the red flags you learned so the next market doesn't repeat it
▶️
@binance @coinbase @okx and every major exchange: freeze wallets fast once on-chain analysts flag them. When a Ponzi starts dumping, minutes matter
▶️ To every crypto holder reading this: if this model shows up in your groups, report it to your national cybercrime authority (US:
ic3.gov, India:
cybercrime.gov.in or 1930)
Lesson for my CryptoPatel Family 👉
👉 "Arbitrage bot" is the same lie as "cloud mining" and "volatility software". Different words, same empty box
👉 A wallet that holds your keys is not a wallet. It is a deposit slip
👉 If the founders are foreigners you have never heard of, check whether they are actors. In this case, they literally were
👉 In many countries you will not be treated as a victim if you joined a pyramid. You can lose your money and your legal standing at the same time
PlusToken is the largest crypto Ponzi in history by victim count. The money was recovered. The people were not compensated. Remember that before you trust any platform with your keys.
Not Financial Advice. ALWAYS DYOR.