It appears that a group of Serbian nationals started a new cryptocurrency and robbed more than $11 million after convincing people to invest in a farming mine in China. According to an article, more than 500 investors were promised huge gaining in cash and cryptocurrencies if they invested in the crypto-mining operation. The profit never came, and all the money went into overseas accounts.
Who started the cryptocurrency fraud?
Kristijan Krstic is a Serbian-Australian who has a long history of fraudulent behaviour and is now accused of having transferred all the money into his overseas accounts. John DeMarr, a private investigator from California, helped him and pleaded guilty last week. DeMarr took around $2 million and used the money to buy expensive cars, pay off his personal debts and renovate his house. He could spend up to five years behind bars.
How did it all start?
A group of Serbian nationals led by Krstic ran more than 20 cryptocurrency scams and robbed more than $70 million. One of the scams is Bitcoiin2gen (B2g) cryptocurrency. DeMarr began to promote an online investment platform back in 2017. Start Options platform supposedly provided cryptocurrency mining, trading and other services. In reality, the investors never received any gaining or their money back. The reports also mentioned that Krstic used different alias in other countries to run the scheme. Felix Logan was one of his aliases.
Steven Seagal promoted the cryptocurrency
The article mentions that those who invested received false statements. They believed their money was growing and could receive up to 200% in return in a couple of months. After the two months passed, some of them wanted their money back. Unfortunately, this did not happen. What is worse, actor Steven Seagal was hired to make promotional material for the cryptocurrency. He became the Brand Ambassador of something that does not exist, and his agent declared that the actor has no idea it was a scam.
