One of the biggest digital currency scam PlusToken operators has been sentenced to jail for up to 11 years. A Chinese court also fined the PlusToken operators up to $900,000 for their $2.25 billion Ponzi scheme roles. PlusToken lured investors with promises of quick and guaranteed returns and failed to do so. The firm brought on several others and expanded the scam to other Southeast Asian countries, including China, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.
The Chinese government brought an end to the scam in July 2020.
The Chinese government brought an end to the PlusToken scam in July 2020, arresting 109 PlusToken operators. Out of these, 27 held executive positions at the scam. A Chinese court has sentenced the key operators of the Ponzi scheme. According to the South China Morning Post report, the court in Yancheng, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, has sentenced Chen Bo and 13 of his co-conspirators to between two and 11 years behind bars. The report further revealed that the court also imposed fines on the 13, ranging from 120,000 yuan ($18,285) to 6 million yuan ($914,000).
One of Bo’s accomplice was sentenced to four years in prison.
One of Chen Bo’s accomplice, Chen Tao, was sentenced to four years in prison by the Chinese court. He was in charge of transferring and laundering the illegal gains made through PlusToken. The Chinese court ruled that the National Treasury would take over the seized funds. These include 194,775 BTC, 487 million XRP, and 6 billion DOGE. As reported earlier, the seized digital currencies were worth $4.2 billion at current prices. PlusToken operators had devised a pyramid scheme that managed to lure over 2.6 million investors, authorities said. According to investors, the operators also lied to investors that they were making money through digital currency investing.
