The "HT Brick Moving" fraud team was destroyed by Wenzhou police

Living in a luxury house, driving a Ferrari, involving over 100 million yuan, the "HT Moving Bricks" fraud team was destroyed by Wenzhou police

On July 9, according to information from the Cyber ​​Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, recently, the Ouhai police in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province cracked the country's first criminal case using blockchain "smart contracts", destroyed two crime dens, arrested 10 criminal suspects, and seized and confiscated luxury cars and real estate such as McLaren and Ferrari. The amount involved in the case is as high as more than 100 million yuan.

On April 8, 2020, the Ouhai District Branch of the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang Province received a report from a citizen named Mr. Li. Mr. Li said that he had joined a Telegram communication group called "Huobi Global Arbitrage HT Chinese Group Community". The group owner posted some "arbitrage tutorials" in the group, and many group members shared their experiences in the group, saying that they had made profits by following the tutorials.

Little did they know that this was just a carefully packaged pig-killing dish.

The scammers claimed that due to large market price fluctuations, there is arbitrage space for the same currency between exchanges. Users only need to open the imToken wallet and send ETH to the smart contract address starting with 0xe5... to obtain HT at a ratio of 1:60, and then recharge the received HT into the exchange. Selling the extra ETH is the arbitrage income.

Some users found that they could indeed get real HT back when they deposited a small amount of ETH at the beginning, but when they became greedy and deposited a large amount of ETH, they found that they no longer received the returned HT, or the returned HT became counterfeit currency with no trading value. But by the time they realized they had been cheated, it was too late.

In this case, when Mr. Li transferred 10 ETH worth 12,000 yuan to the account provided by the group owner, the other party returned 600 fake HT that could not be traded. At this time, Mr. Li realized that he had been cheated and immediately called the police.

After investigation, the police found that most of the members in the chat group named "Huobi Global Brick Arbitrage HT Chinese Group Community" were dragnets. Their task was to post false information and lure victims into being deceived.

In June 2020, Ouhai police dispatched elite forces from cyber security, criminal investigation, and police stations to conduct a unified crackdown with the cooperation of Fuzhou police in Fujian Province. They successfully arrested all 10 suspects in a luxury villa and a commercial house in Cangshan District, Fuzhou. They seized dozens of mobile phones and computers used in the crime, tens of thousands of virtual currencies such as ETH, BTC, and USDT, and seized luxury cars and real estate such as McLaren-650S and Ferrari-California T, with a total value of more than 13 million yuan.

After being arrested, the leader Chen and others confessed to the crime. Since 2019, the gang has used fake HT "smart contracts" to illegally obtain tens of thousands of ETH virtual currencies from victims. The police have obtained information on more than 1,300 people being deceived across the country, and the value of the case is as high as more than 100 million yuan.

According to the police, Chen, Yu and Xu were college classmates who had just graduated and entered the society. Eager to make quick money, they started to have crooked ideas about virtual currency.

They recruited seven employees and gave them "business training" on computer and blockchain knowledge. They also assigned them detailed tasks such as registering blockchain wallet addresses, selling stolen goods, chatting with victims, and daily management. Relying on the proceeds from the fraud, they went to bars and nightclubs every night and lived in high-end villas and presidential suites of high-end hotels all year round.

Now, what awaits them is court trial and imprisonment.