The Chinese police have seized more than $4.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets in its crackdown against the PlusToken scheme, a recent local court ruling revealed.
According to a report by The Block, the Jiangsu Yancheng Intermediate People's Court ruled against the perpetrators of the multi-billion dollar crypto scam on November 19, but details of that were brought to the public domain on Thursday.
The court has convicted 15 people associated with the scheme so far, sentencing jail time between 2 to 11 years, along with fines between $100,000 to $1 million. Earlier this year, local media reported that the Chinese police nabbed 27 masterminds of the crypto scam.
Though the Blockchain Analytics companies were estimating the value of the seized assets from the Ponzi scheme, this is the first time an official figure of the seized PlusToken-related crypto assets came out.
The police seized 194,775 BTC, 833,083 ETH, 1.4 million LTC, 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 DASH, 487 million XRP, 6 billion DOGE, 79,581 BCH, and 213,724 USDT from 7 convicts during their crackdown. Current total market value of these assets tops $4.2 billion.
However, the seized assets are below the market estimation of the size of the massive Ponzi scheme.
An $11 Billion Crypto Scam
Over 2.6 million investors fell for the fraudulent crypto scheme, across 3,293 layers during its operation between April 6, 2018, and June 27, 2019, the court detailed. Though the majority of the victims are concentrated in China and South Korea, PlusToken has made a global impact.
Furthermore, the court ruling revealed that the scheme swindled the victims, gaining 314,000 BTC, 117,450 BCH, 96,023 DASH, 11 billion DOGE, 1.84 million LTC, 9 million ETH, 51 million EOS, and 928 million XRP.
Earlier media reports showed that the fraudulent crypto scheme hoarded over 50 billion yuan (around $7.6 billion). With over $11 billion, the present market price of all digital currencies absorbed by PlusToken dwarfs this estimate.
Though the Chinese court detailed that the seized assets will be processed, and gains will be forfeited to the national treasury, the details of that were unfurnished.
