The state attorney general’s office yesterday sued a Chinese cryptocurrency venture with nearly the same name as another, more legitimate cryptocurrency venture, for defrauding crypto investors and moved to freeze the company’s assets. It announced that it had located the assets in yet another cryptocurrency company account.
In a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Suffolk said at least two Massachusetts residents had filed an impending “initial coin offering” (which never materialized) on a domain called Creditcoin. said he was deceived by a fake company that promised healthy earnings and was defrauded. .cc uses links to documentation from creditcoin.org, a genuine company not affiliated with Chinese counterfeits.
Since at least March 2023, CreditCoin has represented itself as a “public blockchain” and offers a “utility token”, also known as CreditCoin or CTC, through an upcoming “Initial Coin Offering”. In reality, CTC is a fictitious cryptocurrency and all cryptocurrencies. Any statements about his upcoming ICO are false.
The state explained how a person was deceived, starting with being chatted on TikTok.
CreditCoin representatives approached Massachusetts consumers through TikTok and began a personal relationship. In conversations with CreditCoin representatives, the Massachusetts victim revealed that he resides in Massachusetts.
A CreditCoin scammer calling himself “Akiko Herrera” has tricked an imminent victim into switching to the Telegram platform. The Telegram platform focuses on conversations and allows you to:
CreditCoin representatives use manipulative techniques such as having private conversations and discussing plans to visit victims to instill reassurance in them. Once trust is established, CreditCoin representatives will introduce cryptocurrency investment ideas, such as investing in the CTC ICO.
CreditCoin puts up hurdles to investing, such as requiring victims to inform CreditCoin of the exact amount of bitcoins that have been transferred to their wallets, in order to feign legitimacy. Any inconsistency will cause the transaction to fail. These challenges helped convince victims that CreditCoin was not a scam.
Once the initial investment is made, the CreditCoin website will reflect that the victim’s balance will increase. A CreditCoin representative will contact the victim and their income. Representatives said they would continue to invest and encourage victims to do the same.
According to the complaint, on March 24, one of the Massachusetts victims accessed Cash App, purchased approximately $1,350 worth of bitcoin, and transferred it to CreditCoin as an initial investment.
After that, he saw his investments “grow”, at least according to the CreditCoin website, and was encouraged to continue, exchanging about $13,500 of real money for Bitcoin over the next two months. , transferred it to CreditCoin.
By May 16, CreditCoin showed him a balance of $54,270, according to the complaint.
After that, the complaints continued, saying they received notice that a planned “new coin offering” was coming soon and that they needed to liquidate their holdings because the value of the cryptocurrency would drop so quickly after its release. The only problem is that liquidating his holdings will require a “collateral” fee plus taxes, or $4,794 for him.
And in a text message he sent to the AG office, he began to notice something was wrong. Because he was never told about the withdrawal fee. And he knew that capital gains tax was paid on profits after the fact, not before. CreditCoin told him that he was wrong, that he should just Google it, and that his funds could be withdrawn for real money on a particular exchange site within 24 hours.
Readers, would you be surprised to learn that these funds are not available within 24 hours?
The Federation used blockchain analysis tools to track victims’ funds through multiple transactions to a single wallet hosted by Binance.com. …
This wallet belongs to a Chinese resident named Wang Tingting.
The current balance of this wallet is USD 281,352.
In addition to seeking to block CreditCoin.cc from making any offerings to Massachusetts residents, the state is also seeking an injunction to freeze Tingting’s assets on Binance.com. Late yesterday, a Suffolk High Court judge set a hearing for Thursday at the request.
