In China, organizers of a $1.1 billion WoToken crypto-pyramid are sentenced

A court in China sentenced the organisers of the WoToken cryptocurrency pyramid to varying terms of imprisonment, the damage from which amounted to about $1.1 billion, according to The Block.

According to the court’s decision, the four convicted will serve between 2.5 and 8.8 years in prison.

The ill-gotten proceeds of 425 million yuan (~$63 million) from the scheme will be confiscated in favour of the state.

The court found that Gao Yidun, Li Sibin, Wang Xiaoyin and Tian Bo ran the WoToken trading platform with the native token WOR from August 2018 to November 2019, built on a multi-level pyramid scheme.

As of 8 October 2019, the platform had attracted 715,249 users from China.

The court listed the total amount of assets they invested in the fraudulent scheme, including:

• 46,050 BTC;
• 286 million USDT;
• 2 million ETH;
• 292,590 LTC;
• 6.8 million EOS.

At the time of the WoToken organisers’ arrest in May this year, the aggregate value of the platform’s funds was about 7.7 billion yuan (~$1.1 billion).

Earlier, Chinese authorities detained key suspects in the PlusToken pyramid for more than $3 billion.

In September this year, the prosecution filed charges against all six detainees. They were charged with organising and running a fraudulent scheme.

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