117 residents of the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan Invested in Fraudulent Crypto-the Takorp financial pyramid scheme and lost their funds, the Republican Financial Monitoring Agency (AFM) reported.
The scheme’s organizers used elements of network marketing to attract money under the guise of investing in digital assets, according to officials.
To participate in the project, investors were encouraged to purchase USDT stablecoins on the OKX crypto exchange for a minimum of $30 and a maximum of $500, and then transfer them to Takorp’s trust management for a guaranteed 100% return. However, the scheme operated according to the classic pyramid scheme model, where payments to previous participants were made from the funds of new investors.
One of the conditions for participating in the project was to attract at least five new investors. The total amount of payments to investors depended on the amount of the investment and the number of referrals attracted through the links, as well as the six-level VIP-1 to VIP-6 reward system. To create the illusion of reliability, the organizers held charity events in orphanages and kindergartens.
The AFC said that the pyramid organizers bought an apartment in Pavlodar worth 10 million tenge ($18,500) with the money of depositors and opened four deposits in banks worth 8 million tenge ($14,800).
The court has imposed an arrest on the suspects’ real estate and cryptocurrency worth $32,000. The criminal case has been sent to court.
Earlier, the Almaty Department of the Agency for Financial Markets reported on the liquidation of the Matic Basket financial pyramid scheme, whose creators offered to invest in digital asset mining and cryptocurrency trading.
