Pakistani Investors Lose 1 billion in Bitcoin scandal

Bitcoin is the new talk of the town these days. Since most of the people in Pakistan are investing in it, spammers are taking it as an opportunity to steal it. In such an effort, a new scam has surfaced on the internet that has resulted in the loss of 1 billion bitcoins by Pakistani investors. A program that went famous in just a few days asked bitcoin investors that they can make quick cash through just a few clicks while sitting at home. All users needed to do is to bet whether the bitcoin price will rise or fall. There were 5-minute trading periods in which investors were able to bet on whether Bitcoin’s price would increase or decrease. Pakistani Investors Lose 1 billion in the Bitcoin scandal.

The name of this app which was a scam is “HFC Pak Trading App.” Those people who were interested in investing were asked to download the app. Later on, it was said that by using finance or other digital money exchange, investors would be able to convert their currency into cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency would be deposited into the HFC account of the investors. NO doubt the functionality looks quite real and like other digital financial platforms that are currently operational in Pakistan.

Pakistani Investors Lose 1 billion in Bitcoin scandal

Due to its simplicity, many people believe it and also passed it on to their friends and it became famous in just a couple of days. Some of the people who invested at the start made huge profits due to which they were further encouraged to pass on this opportunity. More people started investing and they only became a victim of online fraud on December 19 due to which they lost around Rs. 1 billion of their savings.

A victim of the scam also revealed that they were using Telegram as the source of communication. While telling about this whole story, a victim revealed:

“An analyst established a Telegram group with approximately 40000 members. These individuals made investments ranging from $30 to $50,000. The analyst also gave them advice,” 

It means all those people who were adding their money to the app were added to the Telegram group by scammers in order to show that this whole thing is real when it is not.

Source: Startup Pakistan

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