The Crypto Debiex platform was ordered to pay around $ 2.5 million after failing an American prosecution at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, accusing it of being a romantic swindle ring.
The judge of the Arizona Federal Court, Douglas Rayes, on March 13, hosted the previous request of the CFTC for summary judgment in his case and ordered Debiex to reimburse around $ 2.26 million he stole to his customers, as well as a civil sanction of almost $ 221,500.
Judge Rayes said there was no evidence that Debiex’s non-compliance with the CFTC was the result of an “excusable negligence”.
The CFTC continued Debiex in January 2024, saying that its staff directed a so-called “pork butcher” scam, where they initiated romantic relationships with customers on social media to gain confidence to convince them to invest in the platform.
The program hung five victims who filed approximately $ 2.3 million in total on Debiex, which the alleged negotiation platform stole, said the CFTC.
An extract highlighted from the ordinance of judge Rayes summarizing the CFTC file against Debiex, source: Court
The CFTC also accused Zhāng Chéng Yáng of being a “silver mule” for Debiex, whose crypto wallets were used to accept and steal victims’ funds.
Judge Rayes granted a CFTC request for a default judgment against Zhāng on March 12, deeming adequately alleged that he controlled a crypto portfolio with Okx “who received digital assets to which he had no legitimate complaint”.
He said OKX “voluntarily preserved” the crypto in Zhāng’s account and ordered its content, made up of $ 5.70 attachment (USDT) and nearly 63 ether (ETH) worth $ 119,500, to be transferred to an unnamed victim.
The CFTC declared in its January 2024 complaint that the Debiex program had seen its managers unknown targeting potential victims via social media to attract them to websites that it had created marketing itself as a “decentralized perpetual contract trading platform” where users can make term and “mining transactions”.
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Debiex’s staff would present themselves as women and have a relationship with the victims through “continuous and repeated messages and sharing alleged images of themselves” while claiming to be “very successful digital basic products merchants”, declared the CFTC.
Once an account has been created and customers have sent their crypto, the CFTC said that Debiex would share “fictitious information” on customer sales, commercial positions and profits.
“All this information was most likely false,” said CFTC. “The evidence shows that the digital assets of customers have simply been sent to numerous digital asset portfolios to try to hide their destination.”
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