Africrypt Stole Billions In BTC, Is It The Biggest Scam In History?

Africrypt stole $3.6 billion in BTC just as the investors are having a hard time managing the coin’s volatility as we reported in our previous BTC news today.

Two brothers as the founders of Africrypt a crypto investment company in Cape Town vanished mysteriously. The facts have yet to be confirmed in court but the reports that if it turns out to be an exit scam than a hack, it will mark it as the biggest one in history. There were many red flags for investors in either case with the users being promised high returns of up to 10%. Africrypt was formed in 2019 by the brothers Raees and Ameer Cajee and this was run by them. When it delivered the message to the investors alleging the platform had been hacked and absconded with about 54 billion rands worth of BTC or $3.6 billion at the time.

The brothers transferred the pooled money from the platform’s South African account and they pooled these funds using BTC on the blockchain and interestingly that all started in April 2021 when BTC was trading at the high of $60,000. The company said it will halt all operations while it began the process of attempting to retrieve the stolen funds and the compromised information. The South African law firm Hanekom Attorneys took the case on behalf of the affected users and said that the suspicions started coming up as the message included a warning:

“clients may proceed the legal route, but we ask clients to please acknowledge that this will only delay the recovery process.”

Africrypt employees lost access to the back end platforms a week before the alleged hack and the Hanekom attorneys said:

“We were immediately suspicious as the announcement implored investors not to take legal action.”

According to the Hanekom Attorneys, the brothers transferred 69,000 BTC from AFricrypt’s accounts and the customer wallets and then subjected the monies to the dark web tumblers and mixers resulting in the extreme fragmentation to make all the assets untraceable. South Africa’s Gauteng South Court granted a provisional liquidation order against the brothers and they were given until July 2021 to respond to the order with the law firm has reported the case to the elite unit of the national police called the “Hawks.”

According to the African online news BitcoinKe, Africrypt stole by gathering clients and targeting high net worth investors and urges them to refer their friends while offering returns of up to 10% per day. According to the reports, the South African FNB and enabled all of the transactions for the investment platform. However, one spokesperson Nadiah Maharaj refused any kind of relationship with the company:

“FNB once again confirms that it does not have a banking relationship with Africrypt. Due to client confidentiality, FNB cannot provide any information on specific bank accounts.”