Moshe Hogeg, the co-CEO and founder of Sirin Labs – one of last year’s most popular ICOs, raising more than $150 million and endorsed by football superstar Lionel Messi, fell victim on Telegram.
The founder of Sirin Labs – an ICO project endorsed by Lionel Messi and raising $150 million to create a blockchain-based smartphone, has become a victim to an elaborate scheme which resulted in the loss of an undisclosed but significant amount of Bitcoin (BTC).
According to a Facebook confession post, written by Hogeg himself, Hogeg attempted to buy a bulk amount of Grin (a privacy cryptocurrency based on Mimblewimble) using Bitcoin through a trusted over-the-counter (OTC) trading solution.
He had looked for a reliable seller on the platform and managed to reach a miner, which the nickname of @JanDirecks, who pretended to be on behalf of Altonomy OTC trading. The latter was vouched for by a third-party trustee.
Unfortunately for Hogeg, however, the trustee and the seller were in on the scheme together. The entire scheme was carried out through Telegram’s messenger. First, for the seller to gain Hogeg’s trust, he reportedly sent him a certain amount of cryptocurrency as a proof that he holds the requested Grin tokens.
Once this was done, Hogeg went on and sent the whole amount of Bitcoin he wanted to trade for Grin tokens, which is undisclosed to the moment of writing. The Bitcoin amount was transferred to an unknown escrow service, which was pretending to be on behalf of Altonomy OTC. As soon as this was done, unfortunately, both the escrow trustee and the seller took off, never to be seen again.
The news comes just a few days after Sirin Labs launched the very first and the only blockchain mobile phone store in the world.
This is an excellent opportunity to remind that crypto brings great features like the ability to be your own bank, however, because there is no central authority, there is no one to take responsibility in such fraud cases like the above. We always remind to follow the following crucial security tips when handling crypto.
We’ve tried to get Hogeg’s response with no success to this moment.
