Fraudsters forge Central Bank of Russia license to dupe victims as Free TON

A new form of online fraud has spread, posing as an opportunity to earn extra income from investing in the blockchain platform Free TON. The drew attention to this, the Vklader portal reported.

The scammers engage in correspondence with potential victims through messaging apps and offer inter-exchange arbitrage services, promising instant profits.

“Exchanges between exchanges occur almost every second, and profits from trades are credited to your balance every second. Doing this on your own is difficult, so an algorithm was created to automate the exchange process,” the scammers say in a message.

According to the scheme’s organizers, they allegedly keep 10% of the user’s profits as a commission, “withheld on withdrawal.”

To attest to the legality of their activities, the scammers provide potential victims with a “license” of a professional securities market participant from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, issued to a certain investment company Telegram TON LTD.

Source: Vklader.

The scammers may send a draft “agreement” to open a trading account with the company Free TON LTD. They also use old materials from Forbes, The New York Times, Wikipedia, RBC and Kommersant.

The Free TON developers warn users about the fraudulent nature of such offers. Dmitry Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, emphasizes that the open Free TON blockchain is governed by the community and never asks for money or user data.

“Free TON has nothing to do with any fiat money, operations with them, arbitrage, or other schemes of quick earnings,” he said in a ForkLog interview.

Earlier, the launch of the TON blockchain platform was cancelled due to legal disputes with U.S. authorities.

In May 2020, based on the Telegram Open Network protocol, the Free TON mainnet launched with the native token TON Crystal.

Read more about the project in ForkLog’s card.

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