$50M Telegram OTC Crypto Scam Exposed, Targets Top Investors

• Aza Ventures, the main group behind various deals, revealed that they had also been scammed. 
• The scam crumbled on June 1, after the final deal offering Fluid tokens was introduced.

Altcoin Alpha recently unveiled a multi-million-dollar OTC Telegram crypto scam on a social media platform X. The scam stole more than $50 million involving tokens such as SUI, NEAR, Axelar, SEI, and others. 

The scam wasn’t noticed for months and targeted prominent names in the industry, such as venture capitalists, key opinion leaders, and prominent crypto whales. The scam first looked like Tier-1 OTC deals shared in Telegram groups by VC circles and private investors. 

The deal included a discount of up to 50% with a 4 to 5-month vesting period for high-profile projects such as Graph, Aptos, SEI, and SWELL. Initially, the deals were executed perfectly to create trust among users. 

Once the trust was created, investors invested larger amounts and were convinced by a smooth process and growing hype. As a result of this, a rise in OTC deals, including high-profile tokens, increased over Telegram. 

But by this year, some highlighted that something is fishy. A SUI team member, Eman Abio, states that there is NO deal. MultiversX’s Lucian Mincu also highlighted the issue. But the alerts didn’t affect investors, and they carried on to invest. 

Exposing The Scam 

The scam crumbled on June 1, after the final deal offering Fluid tokens was introduced. Just after the token distributions from previous deals suddenly stopped. Excuses such as claims of travel issues, exchange problems, and KYC delays surfaced on the platform. 

On Thursday, Aza Ventures, the main group behind various deals, revealed that they had also been scammed. They further went on to unveil that their main contact, Source 1, had been operating a Ponzi scheme, using the money of new investors to pay earlier investors. 

The industry was shocked when the group mentioned that the other two sources, Source 2 and Source 3, were also having deals with Source 1. The complete setup crashed quickly, and the complete scale of the scam was exposed. 

The latest update claims Ravindra Kumare as Source 1. However, he denies any wrongdoing and said that a full statement is coming.  Aza Venture still claims that he operated a Ponzi scheme and transferred $24.5 million through wallets now associated with Binance. 

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