Twitter account ‘Whale Alerts’ posted a tweet this morning alerting Ethereum holders that more than $105 million worth of ETH has been moved by PlusToken scammers.
PlusToken, which pulled an exit scam earlier this year with an estimated $2.9 billion of users’ funds, is speculated to be behind the recent immense sell-off pressure for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Although six PlusToken fraudsters were arrested and brought to justice in China recently, it’s believed many are still at large and maintain access to the Ponzi scheme’s cryptocurrency wallets.
Earlier this week, Coin Rivet reported that blockchain research group Chainalysis had attributed Monday’s huge BTC sell-off to PlusToken scammers dumping Bitcoin.
It’s estimated that the group still has 20,000 BTC to dump, and scammers have been using cryptocurrency mixers and OTC trading desks associated with Huobi to sell the stolen funds.
However, the research group also found that much of PlusToken’s Ether – an estimated 800,000 ETH – remains unmoved. Only 10,000 ETH has been sold off to date.
It now seems that this ETH is on the move, with 789,525 of the funds shifted to an unknown wallet, according to Whale Alert.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 789,525 #ETH (105,099,509 USD) transferred from PlusToken to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 19, 2019
As the markets have already seen immense volatility this week, the threat of a fresh sell-off of this magnitude could cause mass panic selling among Ethereum holders.
Have the scammers identified themselves?
In what appears to be an even stranger turn of events, the PlusToken scammers have seemingly revealed themselves on Twitter, explaining their token transactions.
According to Matthew Graham, CEO at Sino Global Capital, the scammers released a video in Mandarin showing the source of the funds, where they’re moving them, and why.
Plustoken scammers trying to explain away their token transactions, the brazenness is really incredible (Mandarin video) pic.twitter.com/upFE4MDnBr
— Matthew Graham (@mattyryze) December 19, 2019
Graham shared that it’s unclear at this point whether those behind the video are part of the original PlusToken Ponzi team or if it’s been produced by affiliates of the scam.
The destination Ethereum address for the stolen funds is a fresh address never used for transactions before.
The address has since been flagged by Etherscan as a ‘PlusToken Ponzi scam’ address, and the explorer urges users to exercise caution if they interact with the wallet.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.