Cryptocurrencies continue to dominate the finance market, and it is no wonder why investors are hooked up with these types of virtual money. Like they say, "high risk, high return," the digital medium of exchange still poses a lot of trouble.
For instance, some Singaporeans stumbled into Torque trading, only to lose their life savings later. The cases were reported last week, and the investors said that the staggering financial damage amounted to millions.
Singaporean Traders' Investments Are Now Zero in Torque
In a report by The Strait Times on Tuesday, Apr. 6, a woman named Jenny happened to have a $500,000 worth of investment in Torque, a Singaporean trading platform.
Later, after she has accepted 1-2% from Torque, she decided to invest another $500,000 so her total investment now accounted for $1 million. The money used in the platform came from her life savings, which spanned for over 20 years.
Moreover, Jenny also encouraged her family members, especially the elders, to invest in the market with total money of $2.5 million being spent. However, she did not tell the elderly that she was struggling for the imposed interest of 1 to 2%.
However, the instant that she put all her savings in the platform, they suddenly disappeared. The scenario likely appeared to be a fraud, as what the investors worried about, like in the case of a cryptocurrency scam.
This also led investors to believe that what happened is a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme, The Independent reported on Friday, Apr. 2.
In an MLM pyramid scheme, there is a requirement for an upfront charge, which should be paid first by the willing investors. It is also in line with the financial perks that participants will receive after a successfully recruiting another individual into the team.
It goes to show that the organization expands as more people join them. In this way, the investors already have an outlet to regain the upfront charge handed earlier, besides huge profit gains that they would receive.
The huge risk posed in this scheme is the recruitment of the participants. Most likely, the marketing of the cryptocurrency will fail if an individual also fails to recruit a person to enter the group.
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Torque Employee is the Culprit in the Case
Torque Founder Bernard Ong
Bernard Ong, the founder of Torque crypto trading, said that a dishonest employee who made unauthorized trades was the person responsible for the platform's collapse, However, at the moment, the said individual could not be reached anymore.
Since October 2020, the liquidation of Torque went high by about 500%, which is at par with bitcoin's price. This also led to a massive spike of over US$60,000 or S$80,628 per coin last month.
On Wednesday, Mar. 31, the liquidator of the trading platform reported that the injunction has been acquired from the High Court to corner the purported employee who could have disposed of his assets already.
As of Mar. 2, the approximate claims of the creditors were said to be around US$325 million or S$436 million. Meanwhile, as of Mar. 14, the value of the cryptocurrency assets controlled by the liquidators was claimed to be around US$3325 million.
The police reports also revealed that there were about 31 cases of fraud where half accounted to engineering professionals and those who are finance experts.
Meanwhile, there were also reported cases of crypto fraud involving a sports coach, a US student, a retiree, a delivery driver, and two homemakers.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Joen Coronel
