Thread by @iamkoshiek

The biggest ever cryptocurrency scam (Africrypt) is now a global news story. Here's a page turn of their "investor presentation" [Thread]

Africrypt claimed to have grown from a one man operation to "one of Africa's largest & most successful AI trading companies"

Ever heard of them? Nobody did. That's the start of any great scam.

Would you hand over your money to a 19yo & a "personal equity trader"? But wait, what if the 19yo had 5 distinctions in matric?

RaeCreate was "incorporated in Hong Kong", domain was a Durban address.

Here's the "services". If you took one quick read and had zero fucking clue what these guys were up to... you're not alone.

"Complex"/ "machine learning"/"merchant banking?!"/ "deep learning"

It's a complete word stew aiming to recruit the inexperienced.

Any prizes for guessing why Durban is on the map? Home boy Raees even defends their "international presence" on line forums.

Of course it's bullshit

I guarantee you will not read this tweet with a straight face. You buy packages. The one package is called a "passive aggressive" portfolio. You literally can't make this up.

Knowing you lost all your money in a passive aggressive fund must hurt different

Returns? Copy/ Paste!

There's many reasons to buy crypto, "often more profitable" is not one of them.

The irony of saying money is "always accessible" while going on to disappear with billions is both depressing & amusing.

The next few pages go into the advantages of AI trading except... these are generic slides with sections of text which appear to be pasted verbatim

No detail on how their actual system works. Nothing

"a trader will never beat a machine" & you're also not seeing your money again

"we were hacked!!"

Also, please don't go the legal route or it will take longer to get your money back.

How tf are you going to "retrieve" stolen crypto? Even the excuse letter was badly thought out.

It's believed some clients invested up to R20m in this shit show. How did ANYONE think this was a good idea?

Scams increase during a pandemic & getting trapped stems mostly from desperation. Here the victims are folks with cash

Poor due diligence & outright greed burns everyone

Whether it's Forex, crypto, stocks, commodities... if anyone EVER tells you they figured out a magic pattern to consistently beat the market based on secret technology...

Just remember - they're making money from you & not for you.

When there's no product. You're the product.

SA is a hotspot for financial crime thanks to a confluence of factors.

You're looking at corrupt governance, a culture of non-accountability, understaffed & lethargic financial regulators, poverty, desperation, unfiltered greed & extremely low levels of basic financial literacy.