The federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is investigating what could be the biggest online fraud of Pakistan’s history.
Around 55,000 people lost around Rs18 billion in the scam.
As many as 11 mobile applications have been named in the scam. These are MCX, HFC, HTFOX, FXCOPY, OKIMINI, BB001, AVG86C, BX66, UG, TASKTOK, 91fp, said FIA Cyber Crime Reporting Sindh chief Imran Riaz.
The investments made by the users vary from $100(~Rs17,800) to $80,000 (~14,168,000).
HFC Pak even gave its users profit from August to December.
How they defrauded people
The FIA said that the scam worked on the pattern of pyramid scheme. The companies offered unrealistically high returns to customers on their investment for bringing in more investors. This way, those running scheme were able to payoff earlybirds (initial investors) from the money that they receive from new customers. This continued till the scammers were able to accumulate base capital worth billions of rupees, the FIA said in its statement.
The investors were asked to download apps and were asked to convert fiat money into cryptocurrency through Binance or any other digital money changer. The cryptocurrency would then be deposited into investors’ accounts on HFC or other apps.
Those who invested money were also added to groups on Telegram, a heavily-encrypted messaging app. They were given betting tips on whether Bitcoin will up or down.
“They used to give assurance that you won’t lose your money,” said one of…