A huge stash of cryptocurrency linked to one of the most notorious scams in the industry’s history is now on the move.
Whale watchers are monitoring the transfer of 26,316,339 EOS, worth about $67 million. According to the crypto tracker Whale Alert, the funds were sent from a known PlusToken address to a wallet of unknown origin.
In addition, the XRP explorer Bithomp says a large XRP whale that surfaced last week is also part of the Plustoken scam.
The whale moved 284,774,000 XRP worth about $53.7 million in two transactions. Although Whale Alert identified the owners of the XRP in question as unknown, Bithomp says the sending wallet is owned by PlusToken scammers.
? ? 150,000,000 #XRP (28,238,863 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 19, 2020
? ? 134,774,000 #XRP (25,568,073 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 19, 2020
PlusToken is an alleged Ponzi scheme that launched in 2018 in South Korea. It promised high-yield returns to its investors, produced by “exchange profit, mining income, and referral benefits”.
The popular scheme drew in millions of users, with Ciphertrace reporting that investors lost an estimated $2.9 billion after PlusToken’s app and exchange eventually went offline last year.
The thieves behind the scam have long been accused of creating selling pressure on the Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets as they attempt to offload their holdings in exchange for fiat.