Chinese WOTOKEN Scam Stole More Than $1 Billion In Bitcoin

The Chinese Wotoken scam managed to steal more than $1 billion in  Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as the recent Reports show it resembling the notorious PlusToken. In today’s cryptocurrency news, we take a closer look at the WOTOKEN scam that scammed more than 700,000 users.

According to local reports, the trial started on May 14 in the People’s Court of Binhai Country Yancheng City against six defendants that operated the scam project. The court blamed the defendants for organizing and managing a multi-level marketing activity that was covered by fake stories and provided misleading information but also doing serious crimes in the process. The Chinese authorities learned about the WOTOKEN scam back in 2018. The defendants had different responsibilities within the organization varying from recruiting technical personnel and setting up the platform to create online promo campaigns.

The platform operated without any business activities but the marketing messages claimed that it worked as a smart crypto wallet that generated automatic profits for the users without them having to get involved. Because of the MLM based operations, and the claims of quick profits, WOTOKEN was compared to another fraudulent scheme – PlusToken, that also came from China. The popular commentator Dovey Wan said that one ‘’core criminal involved in WOTOKEN is formerly key scammer at PlusToken.’’

The Chinese WOTOKEN scam functioned from 2018 to October 2019 and worked as a classic multi-level project but had a high number of hierarchal levels – 501. More than 715,249 people registered on the platform and the token absorbed more than 46,000 Bitcoins, 2 million ETH, 292,00 LTC coins, 684,000 EOS, and 56,000 BCH. The report calculated that the total amount raised reached almost $1.1 billion. Some of the defendants already had criminal charges so they will get different sentences. The prosecution demanded all of them to pay a fine for their actions but the jail time will vary from six months to eleven years.

Due to the complexity of the trial, the court suspended the case. PlusTOKEN, on the other hand, was named as the number one reason for the decline in prices during March which resulted in the worst day Bitcoin saw in recent years, as reported in the Bitcoin news.