The world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, has established contact with the Cyber Crime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and pledged full assistance with a mega-scam involving 11 Binance-linked applications which were used by fraudsters to loot over $100 million (Rs. 17.68 billion) from Pakistani investors.
As per a series of tweets by the Head of the FIA Cyber Crime Sindh Zone, Imran Riaz, Binance has nominated a two-member team to coordinate with the agency. “They are former investigators with the U.S. Department of Treasury and specialize in cryptocurrency investigations,” he said.
He also praised Binance’s response, which he said was appropriate, given the severity of the situation, and expressed his desire to continue working with the firm to uncover criminal activities involving cryptocurrency in the foreseeable future.
“I appreciate the response of Binance keeping in view the gravity of the issue and looking forward to continued cooperation in unearthing criminal activities based on cryptocurrency,” he tweeted.
Apps named MCX, HFC, HTFOX, FXCOPY, OKIMINI, BB001, AVG86C, BX66, UG, TASKTOK, and 91fp were using Binance blockchain addresses for fraudulent transactions.
According to an official press release issued last week, the Cyber Crime Wing had summoned the General Manager/Growth Analyst Binance Pakistan (Crypto Currency Exchange), Hamza Khan, to come before the FIA and explain his position on the company’s involvement in fraudulent applications.
To recall, according to the initial findings of the FIA inquiry, each of these applications had an average of 5,000 customers. The reported range of investments per person was from $100 to $80,000, with an estimated average of $2,400 per person, making the estimated scam stand at nearly $100 million (Rs. 17.7 billion).
The FIA Cyber Crime Sindh has started working on keeping a close eye on the peer-to-peer transactions performed by Pakistanis using the application to prevent terror financing and money laundering as Binance is the largest easy-to-go platform facilitating such activities.
Source: Pro Pakistani