Yes, Yet Another Cautionary Tale Of Crypto
No, we are not talking about Binance, although they are in trouble in South Canada, where they have a separate business entity called Binance US, which, to this jaded old cynic, sounds like arms-length deniability in practice. The parent organisation is under investigation by a plethora of regulatory agencies: the Securities and Exchanges Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue service. That last one alone would give any business entity the collywobbles. Art!
Typical IRS staffer
Here an aside. Hey, don't quibble, I waited this long! You are surely familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation? Earlier this year, thanks to the collapse of FTX and other criminal crypto collusions, they formed the Virtual Assets Unit, to police the virtual currency market. Art!
Not what you want to see in your office on Monday morning. What do you bet their piercing beady eyes are looking hungrily at Binance?
ANYWAY this is all by-the-by, because the crypto entity we're looking at in this Intro is 'iEarn Bot', which may be the biggest crypto scam to date in terms of numbers affected. Art!
There is no complete total of the number of investors ripped-off by these crooks, and the BBC report only details the number of clients in Indonesia - 800,000. Worldwide, the total is likely to be millions.
Supposedly, one invests money, and you then earn a commission on that daily, which you can see being racked up. The investments are claimed to be done thanks to Artificial Intelligence, which sounds impressive, and explains why you the investor don't need to know anything whatsoever about crypto currencies and investment. 'Close your eyes and trust us!' if you like.
- S – deposit 10 USDT and get 0.3% to 0.5% daily.
- 1 – deposit 31.99 USDT and get 0.3 USDT to 0.36 USDT daily
- 2 – deposit 154.99 USDT and get 1.8 USDT to 2.1 USDT daily.
- 3 – deposit 509.99 USDT and get 6.5 USDT to 8 USDT daily.
- 4 – deposit 2539.99 USDT and get between 35 USDT and 45 USDT daily.
- 5 – deposit 10,099.99 USDT and get between 150 and 200 USDT daily.
What IEarn Bot does is collect as much money in one country as it can, normally paying a local financial expert to give them a veneer of respectability so that people will not do due diligence; all user accounts are then frozen for 'maintenance', meaning nobody can withdraw their funds, and the money vanishes. Then they move on to another country.
Their website is full of red flags, with no details of the business's corporate structure and no contact information. Art!
Playing on both trust and greed
The company alleges that it is based in Austin, Texas. Well, it's not. In fact iit appears to operate out of Vietnam and Cambodia. Their supposed 'founder' has never heard of them and took their use of his name to the police. iEarn Bot also claimed to be working in a strategic partnership with high-recognition businesses such as Huawei - who, again, had never heard of them. They have none of the required regulatory certification or registration documents that a legitimate company would have.
Another telling aspect of these scamblers is that they promised to pay clients for other client referrals, in what resembles a Ponzi scheme, not a sustainable business. Art!
Succinctly put
Well, pucker up, iEarn Bot, because whilst Binance isn't yet on that FBI Virtual Assets Unit radar, you most certainly are.
One financial expert's advice here is a positive touchstone for anyone looking at crypto investment: "If it looks too good to be true, it is."
O and this afternoon's title? Derived from a portmanteau-ing of 'Scam'and 'Gambling'.
Putin On The Fritz
Bloaty Gas Tout is having a bad week. He's now been cited as a criminal by the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which means no trip to the G20 summit in September. By then Ruffia will probably only qualify for the G50.
ANYWAY the BBC's old Moscow Correspondent, Sarah Rainsford - Art!
Saz
- discovered An Interesting Secret. She came to find that Puffy Petrol Pimp is frequently interviewed by various heads of government departments or oligarchs or generals. These interviews are not broadcast. Instead they are kept in storage and when Peter The Average has to vanish for a couple of days or weeks, these tapes are broadcast to give the impression that he's hale, hearty and here. The suspicion is that he's off to get a bath in the blood of virgins, thanks to being ill with <insert long list of horrible diseases here> and this is his medical treatment. It's quite believable, he looked pretty ghastly when last he met with The Beard. Tee hee! Art!
We sincerely hope so!
O and that ICC thing? Don't forget it was the Serbians themselves who handed over their war criminals to the ICC. Peter The Average had better watch his back. I wonder if his bulletproof vest is stab-proof as well?
Pot-AY-Toe Pot-AH-To
This one came up when Your Humble Scribe was looking at the different kinds of refined fuels there are. You see, the world is divided into two camps: those who call a particular distillate 'Kerosene' and those who call it 'Paraffin'.
'Kerosene' comes from 'Keros', the Greek for 'Wax'. Art!
'Paraffin' comes from Latin <hack spit> and 'Parum' for 'Too little' and 'Affinis' for 'Adjacent to'. Which my Collins Concise says is due to it's chemical inertia, a strange statement considering it burns like what-ho.
"The Sea Of Sand"
The Doctor has, typically, managed to enrage one of the ruling class thanks to working out they are responsible for the despoliation of their home-world. He is now en route to be executed. Ooo-er Matron!
Perhaps half the Warrior detachment on duty moved to detain the transgressing alien. To Url's creeping apprehension, fully half the detachment did not move at all. In fact, they seemed to be talking to each other. Discretion deemed that he also not be seen by the detachment, if they were so lary of obeying him.
How had that alien known the truth about events so far in the past! mused Url, sliding away from the trans-mat platform carefully. He had been part of the authority who failed to prevent ecological collapse, as had Sur. The policy decision taken then had been to take a supervisory watch over bio-vore society, to keep their civilisation going until other resources could be discovered. The detachments sent off to other worlds were deemed heretical because they didn't - couldn't - understand the rationale grown up around the culture that had evolved since their departure.
With an uncharacteristic pang of conscience, Url wondered briefly if he and the other scientists-turned-aristocrats had got it wrong.
Regardless, he intended to see that small alien Thedoctor strung up at the execution plaza, ready to divulge the secrets of Sur's big blue box.
"Faster! Faster! Don't you know you're on a tight schedule?" jibed the Doctor to his captors, who dragged him over the dead grey sands of Homeworld to the Place Of Execution.
Things look at bit bleak for our favourite Gallifreyan, hmmm?
Finally -
Okay, time for a comfort break, a scrape of the bristles, post this scrivel and take Edna for a trot, not necessarily in that order. It's just that I like to keep you informed. Tally ho!
No comments:
Post a Comment