$3.6B in Bitcoin vanishes in ‘hack’ along with owners of South African crypto platform
Around 69,000 Bitcoin (BTC) has vanished from a South African investment platform along with two brothers who owned the crypto firm.
Although the facts are yet to be proven in court, if it turns to be an exit scam rather than a hack, it would be the biggest in history according to Bloomberg. There were warning signs for investors either way, with users reportedly promised returns of up to 10% a day.
AfriCrypt was founded in 2019 and operated by brothers Ameer and Raees Cajee. It had reportedly amassed around 54 billion rands worth of BTC, or $3.6 billion at the time, when it sent a message to investors on April 13 claiming the platform had been hacked.
… Hanekom Attorneys alleges that the brothers transferred the 69,000 BTC — which is now worth $2.2 billion after the recent price tumble — from AfriCrypt’s accounts and client wallets and subjected the funds “to various dark web tumblers and mixers, resulting in severe fragmentation” to make the funds untraceable.
… According to African online crypto news outlet BitcoinKe, AfriCrypt drew in clients by targeting high-net-worth investors and urging them to refer their friends, while also offering returns of up to 10%daily.
The eye-watering daily return puts the 10% monthly return promised to users of South African crypto Ponzi scheme Mirror Trading International into the shade.
MTI has been described as the biggest Ponzi scheme the country had ever seen, pulling in 23,000 BTC from investors ($774 million at today’s prices) with MTI CEO Johann Steynberg reportedly fleeing to Brazil to escape punishment when the firm was placed under provisional liquidation in2020.
The incident could spur regulators’ efforts to impose order on the market amid rising cases of fraud.
Crypto Havens Lure Firms Fleeing South Africa Regulator Fear
While South Africa’s Finance Sector Conduct Authority is also looking into Africrypt, it is currently prohibited from launching a formal investigation because crypto assets are not legally considered financial products, according to the regulator’s head of enforcement, Brandon Topham. The police have not yet responded to a request for comment.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/s-african-brothers-vanish-and-so-does-3-6-billion-in-bitcoin?srnd=cryptocurrencies
