The founders of the South African crypto investment company AfriCrypt disappeared after a reported “hack” along with 69,000 BTC. The suspicion of a gigantic exit scam is in the air.
In mid-April, the investors of the South African crypto investment company AfriCrypt received an enigmatic email. It said that the platform had to be shut down and that all accounts were frozen after a hack. Both customer accounts as well as wallets and nodes were the target of the hack. Temporary network failures are not uncommon, depending on the exchange operator. The ominous thing about this news was an appeal to investors. You have been asked not to report the incident to law enforcement. From the company’s point of view, this would only slow down the resumption of business activity.
Only now does the real motive of this peculiar confidentiality requirement appear. Because the two founders of AfriCrypt have disappeared without a trace and with them 69,000 BTC. After the recent exchange rate losses, this is the equivalent of around 2.3 billion US dollars. As from a report by Bloomberg emerges, the two founders of AfriCrypt ran away shortly after the supposed hack. Before that, however, the 20-year-old Ameer Cajee and the 17-year-old Raees Cajee transferred the collected investor funds from an account at the First National Bank (FNB) in Johannesburg. Great Britain is assumed to be the current whereabouts of the escaped duo.
AfriCrypt attracted investors with unrealistically high returns
However, the facts have not yet been fully clarified. But if the story actually turns out to be an exit scam, it would be loud Bloomberg the biggest scam of its kind. Be that as it may, AfriCrypt investors were warned of the founders’ disappearance. Allegedly they had been promised unrealistically high returns of up to 10 percent per day. The South African law firm Hanekom Attorneys has now taken over the case on behalf of the affected users.
We were immediately suspicious when the announcement prompted investors not to take legal action. Africrypt employees had already lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack
, so the firm. She reported the case to an elite national police force called “Hawks”. The South African Gauteng South High Court has issued a preliminary liquidation order against the Cajee brothers. You have until July 19, 2021 to respond to the ruling. There was a similar case in South Africa with Mirror Trading International (MTI). 23,000 BTC from investors disappeared with CEO Johann Steynberg. He reportedly fled to Brazil to avoid punishment.