In total, the Chinese police seized more than 194,000 bitcoins from PlusToken. In addition to bitcoin, they seized funds in ETH, LTC, DASH, BCH, DOGE, and XRP.
China’s security forces seized more than 194,000 bitcoin (BTC) from members of the well-known PlusToken ponzi scheme, which operated in the Asian country. The BTC figure that the police is keeping back is equivalent to more than 1% of the total supply of bitcoins in circulation, about 18,555,725 BTC.
In a court ruling published this week, the Jiangsu Yancheng Intermediate People’s Court detailed the seizure of funds in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that PlusToken gathered from its victims.
In addition to the 194,000 BTC, local authorities kept back funds in cryptocurrencies such as ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), EOS, DASH, ripple (XRP), dogecoin (DOGE), bitcoin cash (BCH), and tether (USDT). In total, the seized funds are equivalent to more than $ 4.2 billion at current prices.
The totality of cryptocurrencies that the Chinese police confiscated brings new lights on the dimension of PlusToken’s operations. Previously, addresses associated with the fraudulent scheme had moved some 38,000 BTC. And then a report appeared saying about the attempt to erase the trail of another 54,000 bitcoin on coin mixing services.
Now, the ruling of the Chinese court ensures that the funds in the hands of the authorities will receive its proper process; all of this under local law, and the proceeds will go to the National Treasury.
According to the court, PlusToken attracted more than 2.5 million people to its fraudulent arbitration offer with potentially very juicy returns. In just over a year, the scam received more than 314,000 BTC, nine million ETH, and the equivalent of millions of dollars in the other cryptocurrencies.
A total of 15 people have been sentenced for their involvement in these operations to date. The sentences range from 2 to 11 years in prison, in addition to fines that can reach a million dollars.
Largest bitcoin seizure ever
The nearly 200,000 BTC involved in the case make this the largest bitcoin seizure on record. Although not by much, the figure seized from PlusToken exceeds the 174,000 bitcoins seized by the FBI after the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Silk Road dark web marketplace.
Between the two confiscations, each of the adversary powers in political and commercial conflicts came to have under their control 1% of the total circulating bitcoins. However, in the American case, the BTCs were auctioned. The last 44,000 of those bitcoins were bought in November 2015 by 4 bidders.
A few weeks ago, the Justice Department managed to grasp nearly 70,000 new BTCs involved with the dark web market, so they currently have control of a figure of 0.5% of the bitcoins in existence in that one address.
In total, Silk Road received more than 600,000 bitcoins. However, a report mentions the disappearance of some 444,000 BTC of which the pioneer drug market in the use of bitcoin as a means of collecting payment.
PlusToken, a scheme declared a scam by the authorities with more than 100 detainees already, is one of the biggest scams that ever emerged in the cryptocurrency environment in recent years.
Researchers at Elementus even considered that PlusToken could emerge as “the largest cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme to date, outperforming BitConnect, OneCoin, and MMM by a substantial margin.”
By: Jenson Nuñez.
