city of Hongkong JPEX is reportedly facing its “biggest fraud ever” as the number of victims in the JPEX incident continues to grow, leading to more arrests by local police.
JPEX case
according to a Report According to the Hong Kong Free Press (HFRP), 2,086 people have been identified as victims of the incident so far. cryptocurrency exchange JPEX’s fraud. Police also allegedly arrested three other people suspected of committing the crime. Conspirators in financial fraudcausing investors to lose more than $166 million.
One of those arrested is a former lawyer Cryptocurrency Influencer Joseph Lam, who happens to have strong ties to cryptocurrency exchanges. These arrests bring the total number of arrests to 11, with investigations said to be ongoing and more arrests expected.
The JPEX legend began with Hong Kong’s financial regulators, Securities and Futures Commission (China Securities Regulatory Commission) issued statement Investors were warned on September 13 that JPEX did not have the authority to operate a virtual asset trading platform (VATP) in the city. It also mentioned that the exchange has no pending applications to operate in Hong Kong.
The warning was issued to counter the exchange’s statement on its website that it is “a licensed and accredited platform designed to facilitate the trading of digital assets and virtual currencies.” JPEX also claims on its website to be licensed by certain foreign regulatory agencies, which is obviously a lie.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission mentioned in a statement that it had received complaints from retail investors saying that they were unable to withdraw assets from their JPEX accounts or found that their account balances had been “reduced or changed.”
Subsequently, a user on the X (formerly Twitter) platform famous The cryptocurrency exchange has increased withdrawal fees to $999, possibly to discourage users from making withdrawals, as it has also limited the maximum withdrawal limit to $1,000.
At the same time, on September 17, JPEX released statement The company blamed the liquidity crunch it faced on the “malicious freezing of funds” by the third-party market makers it cooperated with. These market makers apparently did this because the exchange faced regulatory scrutiny and negative publicity.
JPEX doesn’t back down
in a statement Released on September 21, JPEX seemed to indicate that there was nothing authorities could do about it because its team members were “in unknown locations around the world.” The exchange said it had never operated a “physical corporate structure” as it was an “impediment to the promotion of cryptocurrencies globally.”
The cryptocurrency exchange also cited unfair treatment by the Securities and Futures Commission, as it said the SEC treated it “with vague guidelines and baseless accusations.” It noted that the SC has also directed telecom providers to block users from accessing the platform.
Due to these “unfair bureaucracies,” the exchange decided to transform into a DAO, hoping that this would help it “get out of trouble and get back on track as soon as possible.”
The statement said that no matter what happens, JPEX “will continue to operate steadfastly.” As of this writing, the exchange’s website is still live.
Total market cap drops to $1.035 trillion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on Tradingview.com
Featured image from Shuttershock, chart from Tradingview.com
