Watching a potential $4 million USD crypto scam unfold
Have we found the real-life Keyser Söze? A potential multi-project rug-pull with a performance that even Kevin Spacey would be proud of. Rolexes, flash cars, threats of hit squads, and claims of FBI involvement. (And unicorns on the moon, of course, because it’s crypto!)
Celebrity ‘appearances’ from rappers Bow Wow and Rich The kid. Millions of dollars allegedly missing.
No, this isn’t my pitch for a new feature film. These are real-life events happening right now and the only certainty is that the truth is nowhere in sight.
Coinfluence: the ‘influencer’ backed crypto launchpad
The drama surrounding crypto project Coinfluence and its CEO, Adrian Baba, has been building lately as they reach their (previously delayed) ICO.
Coinfluence is (or was) a Cryptocurrency project that raised over four million USD$ pre-launch token sales. The idea was to be a launchpad for other crypto projects, with a unique selling point that ‘influencers’ would be the community and they’d influence everyone else into backing Coinfluence projects.
The so-called influencers targeted appeared to be rappers with a large social media presence.
I’ve been following the project in its telegram group, website, and socials since December 2021, and shortly after, another telegram group appeared, transparently named ‘coinfluencescam’. These channels have been the source of my information and provide significant amounts of evidence of events detailed. A number of individuals in the latter group have been tracking the funds spent by Coinfluence for some time now.
Refunds and fudders
When the project first came to my attention, it was because they had delayed their Initial Coin Offering (ICO). No meaningful progress had been made against objectives. The CTO and CMO leave.
Surprisingly, investors who wanted to back out were offered a refund. This may well have been the first refund in Cryptocurrency history. Surely, any business that’s willing to refund can’t be a scam, right?
Repeated accusations were made that refunds were not received. Those people were banned.
People with a negative opinion to share? Those people were banned too.
Musical chairs and shares
New team members were hired, lessons were allegedly learned, there were new plans, renewed optimism.
Competition ‘giveaways’ for Apple MacBook Pros, Rolexes and AirDrops came and went. Baba took the occasional AMA from the seat of a convertible. There’s little evidence that any of it actually happened.
Shady, un-audited smart contract changes followed; investors were offered chances to ‘double down’. They simply had to send more cash to another wallet and a Nigerian prince would be in touch to handle the rest. (Okay the last bit isn’t true!)
The music stopped once again when the purchase of fellow crypto startup, Weentar, a social media platform, was announced. The CEO of Weentnar would become Coinfluence’s new CMO. More team members leave in yet another go-around but these latest developments would definitely take Coinfluence and its followers to the Moon.
I’ll cut to the chase, here’s how that one worked out…
Undeterred by fudders on his own executive team, or the pre-sale price-point of $0.04 USD, Baba announced the ICO would go ahead (on the less-than-reputable crypto exchange XT.com), at a listing price of $1.00 USD per token. (This didn’t quite happen either).
A mysterious character emerges.
One by one the chairs were removed until only one remained. But here the plot thickens.
Days before launch, in order to stop those reporting fake news about the project and ruining it for everyone, all users in the group were prevented from commenting.
Then, less than 24 hours before the re-scheduled ICO, it was finally time for the truth from the CEO and why the project has delivered nothing (not even a MacBook!), which came in the form of a telegram channel message.
Salim, a mysterious seed investor/evil genius is the man really in control of everything and has been since day one.
Every decision, every transaction was his and his alone. All the employees were just mere puppets, victims, unable to do anything but sit by and try to do their best while a monster took people’s hard-earned money without reason.
According to Baba, the project remains alive though and you can trust him to deliver.
Ah okay, well that settles it then. Mystery solved, case closed. Nothing to see here…
People are understandably furious, however, some of the chatter got out of hand. Remarks made in the adjacent scam-themed channel appeared to indicate Baba could be located and certainly implied harm, at least. One guy even claimed to be talking to the FBI.
And the truth?
Is CEO, Adrian Baba, simply poor Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, victim of a tragedy and unfairly accused? Or, is he indeed himself the Keyser Söze-like criminal overlord; in this case, Salim?
It’ll be a while before we know the true extent of what has happened, but here’s what I believe to be true:
All of this has been played out publicly. On Telegram chats, on Twitter, on a blockchain.
This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. The writing was almost quite literally, on the wall.
If we, the web3 community, don’t find a way to effectively self-regulate and protect each other, then the state will do it for us. And we all know how good our governments are at protecting our ‘best interests.
I honestly don’t believe that this project was conceived as a scam. I think the team was simply incompetent at building a business and was incredibly naive. That isn’t a crime.
Perhaps somehow things simply took a serious turn for the worse and Baba & Co were indeed, innocent victims. But with reported links to other recent rug pulls Freetoker and DecentarLabs, we may need to wait for a Netflix special to find out the real ‘truth’!
There are tons of good ideas out there in the world of cryptocurrency and plenty of them have raised boatloads of cash. We’re beginning to find out how many have the talent to deliver against those ideas.
Quite frankly, we may also discover just how gullible people can be.
At the time of writing, this story hasn’t made any major publications. For more info, I recommend taking your popcorn and having a look at the telegram groups, Twitter pages, and wallet transactions.
