A couple in Taiwan has managed to defraud over 1,000 people in a Bitcoin investment scam that was promising large returns.

The scam, which was marketed as a high-yield investment program but was more likely a classic Ponzi scheme, was promoted through messaging app LINE and promised a 250 percent return on Bitcoin invested within a month, and even high returns over a longer period.

According to local media (Google Translate link), no one saw a cent in return, with the couple, with a surname of Shi, simply going to ground and refusing to reply to investors who were looking for their money.

Details of the scam apparently first went public when victims started a public group demanding that their funds be returned and police investigate the scam.

“This matter should be made public … we were mislead, we were cheated,” a victim by the name of Vivan said, before noting that it seemed to be a legitimate offer and that investors simply never suspected it was scam.

Details on long-term returns promised are difficult to ascertain due to the language barrier, but at least in Vivan’s case she seemed to have invested 16 Bitcoin ($6680) and was expecting possibly as much as 10004 Bitcoin in return.

At least one of the scammers has since taken to Facebook to apologize and has promised to return 16 percent of funds invested, however those scammed simply want their original investments back.

Too good to be true

If it looks too good to be true, it usually is, and the stupidly large amount of short-term returns offered here should have immediately rung alarm bells for those approached.

That said it would appear that there was ,at least, a little bit of social engineering at play given LINE was used as the recruiting tool; it’s speculative but a reasonable guess would be that given the victims were approached by the messaging service, they didn’t suspect anything was untowards.

Police in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, are said to be investigating the scam, and the amount believes to have been stolen is NT$50 million, around $1.6 million on the current exchange rate.

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