Optioment Bitcoin Scam: Austrian’s 12,000 BTC Scheme Heist?

It has just been a year after thousands of hungry investors got burnt by the arbitrage trading company referred to as Optioment. It has lead the Australian authorities to have Interpol help them track down these fraudsters that have been responsible for the million-dollar Bitcoin scam.

Another Scam Burns Bitcoin Buyers

The European authorities are on a severe hunt on the criminals involved with scamming thousands of investors that have totaled to a loss of about $100 million worth of bitcoin investment. According to the various reports appearing, Optioment was running a now-defunct site while still holding significant events in Australia.

In these events, the company was advertised as a Private Costa-Rica based bitcoin-fund. A fund that is promising it’s hungry investors some unrealistic returns on their investment. Various company’s such as Ganzger and Partners claim that Optioment had pledged to a weekly interest payment on the amount invested.

Other than the weekly interest promises the company claimed if an investor is willing to go the long-term route there is also something to gain. There would be a 4% interest in the bitcoin deposits. And that is not it; there is an added incentivization when an investor gets new users to the platform.

Techniques to Lure in the Investors

During the first few months’ investors claim that Optioment paid out the promised returns on a timely basis. Thus, this boosted the invested confidence on the company just to lure them in to reinvest into their scheme. But sometime in November during the massive bull run last year, the returns stopped coming leading to the collapse of the fraudulent system.

With such a collapse, it has lead the prosecutor of Vienna to start investigations and consolidating the hundreds of complains that they are receiving against the company. Die Presse reported that more than 10,000 individuals had been victims of the scam, which has resulted in about 12,000 bitcoins that have been lost.

The 12,000 bitcoins lost is estimated to be worth $118.5 million at the time of the report. But with such a significant loss no arrest has been made yet, according to Bloomberg.

A Need for Long-term Financial Stability

With the hunt for Optioment operators due to the massive amounts of investment lost, comes at a time when the European countries are calling for a proper crackdown on the immerging cryptocurrencies. Investors need to be protected of their hard-earned cash.

As we know, investing in any business is a risky endeavor. The same risks are applied to the cryptocurrencies, but the risks seem to be higher. It will threaten the long-term financial stability on a global scale, as investors are spread across the world.

The recent scam of Optioment has shaken some investors trust on the growing demand of cryptocurrencies around the world. Some would say, the past event could be damaging the reputation cryptocurrencies has tried to gain over the years.

But this should not be the case, all we need to do before investing is do a little bit more digging on the investment you are getting into. As we know knowledge is power, and in this case, knowledge will save you millions of dollars.