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Thousands may have lost out to crypto trading app



Experts who have investigated the company say it could be one of the largest crypto scandals to date.Trading in cryptocurrencies has become popular, with people often promised large rewards over short periods.To get more news about crypto currency spam, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

But law enforcement agencies warn of a growing number of scams and recommend investors conduct "due diligence".Roxana, not her real name, is from Romania. She says she lost hundreds of euros when she invested in iEarn Bot. She asked not to have her identity revealed as she fears her professional reputation might be damaged.
Customers buying the bots - like Roxana - were told their investment would be handled by the company's artificial intelligence programme, guaranteeing high returns.

"I invested in a bot for one month," Roxana tells the BBC. "You could see in the app how many dollars the app was creating: there were graphics showing how the investment was progressing.

"It looked quite professional until, at some point, they announced maintenance." At that point, for some time, withdrawals from the app were frozen.
In Romania, dozens of high-profile figures, including government officials and academics, invested via the app.

Roxana says she felt reassured in investing in iEarn bot because it was recommended, among others, by Gabriel Garais, a leading IT expert in the country, through a referral scheme.

"We had the knowledge to think this might be a scam," she says, "but the fact that, in between us and the company there was a reputable teacher, meant that we didn't check too much - we didn't doubt too much."

But Mr Garais insists he too is a victim, as he was fooled into investing his own savings in the app and lost his money.

After iEarn Bot blocked the withdrawals in Romania, Mr Garais publicly distanced himself from the company in a video published originally on YouTube and then shared on Telegram, in which he said the way iEarn Bot behaved pointed to a Ponzi scheme rather than a legitimate tech company.

What happened in Romania is not an isolated incident. Nor is it unique to Romania.

Silvia Tabusca, a Romanian organised crime expert from the European Center for Legal Education and Research, began looking into iEarn Bot after dozens of people lost their money in Romania, including her family members. She discovered that many people in other countries had also lost their money in the scheme.From what we have seen, the number of investors is quite high," she says. "In Indonesia, for example, they [iEarn Bot] claim they had 800,000 customers."

"When they have enough investors and enough money invested in a specific country, they don't allow that country to withdraw any more - and they open other countries."

iEarn Bot presents itself as a US-based company with excellent credentials, but when the BBC fact-checked some information on its website, it raised some red flags.

The man whom the site names as the company's founder told us he had never heard of them. He said he has made a complaint to the police.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alongside companies such as Huawei and Qualcomm, are all named as "strategic partners" of iEarn Bot, but they too said they have no knowledge of the company and they are not working with it.

On the website, the company does not provide any contact information. When the BBC checked the history of its Facebook page, we learned that until the end of 2021, the account was advertising weight-loss products. It is managed from Vietnam and Cambodia.