Few bad eggs end up giving the whole community a bad name. That’s what happening with the bitcoin community. In our recent post, we mentioned about few prevalent misconceptions about bitcoin among the people in Philippines. One of the misconception many people had was that they thought of bitcoin to be a massive Ponzi scheme among others.
READ MORE: Bitcoin, Fintech and Satoshi Citadel in Philippines
Meanwhile in Taiwan, the law enforcement authorities have arrested two people for their involvement in a bitcoin Ponzi scheme. These individuals are alleged to have connections with MyCoin. MyCoin was a Hong Kong based local bitcoin exchange that disappeared overnight with close to $390 million in user funds. Up on investigation it was found that MyCoin was never involved in the operation of a bitcoin exchange but they were in fact running a Ponzi scheme with bitcoin business as a front.
According to media reports, two suspects Lu Kuan-wei and Chen-Yun-fei were caught by the Taipei Criminal Investigation Bureau last week for their reported involvement in MyCoin scams. These two suspects were zeroed in after it was discovered that they were responsible for organizing multiple MyCoin related events.
The arrests comes after 5 months of investigation starting March 2015. The investigations in Taiwan started almost during the same time as the investigations in Hong Kong. While 2 suspects were arrested in Taiwan, Hong Kong law enforcement agencies netted 5 individuals in March. Currently the investigations are still underway and law enforcement agencies from multiple countries are involved in it as individuals from many Asian countries were affected by MyCoin’s scam.
Millions of dollars were invested into MyCoin, which presented itself as a bitcoin investment platform and promised great returns for their investments. The two suspects from Taiwan have reportedly influenced investors during the events to invest large amounts with the promise of returns in less than four and a half months.