In an effort to track down the roots of a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency scam in the region, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has placed an official notice on cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
After receiving many reports about an ongoing scam that involved deceiving investors into sending funds from Binance wallets to unknown third-party wallets, the Pakistani government launched a criminal investigation.
According to local media, the FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing has summoned Binance Pakistan’s general manager Hamza Khan and asked him to establish the exchange’s relationship to “fraudulent online investing mobile applications.”
According to the paper, an appropriate inquiry has also been issued to Binance’s Cayman Islands headquarters and Binance US to clarify the situation.
Investment fraudsters in Pakistan lured users to join Binance and transmit funds to third-party wallets with the promise of unrealistic profits.
“These schemes profit existing clients at the expense of new ones and eventually vanish after building a massive capital base worth billions of rupees,” according to the notification.
The Pakistani agency uncovered at least 11 fake mobile apps that abruptly shut down after successfully stealing the user’s money based on the accusations.
MCX, HTFOX, HFC, OKIMINI, FXCOPY, AVG86C, BB001, UG, BX66, and TASKTOK are among the applications detected by the FIA.
The fraudsters invited the victims to a Telegram channel where they would provide “expert betting signals,” as well as lead them to sign up on Binance to transfer the funds. Each application housed approximately 5,000 customers on average.
The letter stated that “at least 26 questionable blockchain wallet addresses (Binance wallet addresses) where illicit monies may have been sent have been discovered.”
It further stated that a letter was sent to Binance Holdings Limited in order to collect the data of these blockchain wallet accounts and debit block them.
