A high court in the United Kingdom has ordered the shutdown of an alleged cryptocurrency scam exchange known as GPay, which potentially robbed customers of more than $1.8 million in digital funds.
GPay Is Closing Its Doors
The court alleges that the company used fake celebrity endorsements to entice people to step aboard the crypto plane and invest their money. However, the exchange has now come forward to say it has “lost” all the money customers brought to the table and that it is being closed. In actuality, the closure was ordered by UK lawmakers after uncovering some very shady figures about the business in question.
At the time of writing, as many as 108 separate clients have lost digital money. The unfortunate fact is that these customers even selected insurance measures when first working with the exchange to cover themselves should the platform ever be attacked by hackers or witness a crushing blow to its servers that rendered it inoperable.
However, it doesn’t look like those insurance policies are in place after all. Customers first began to get suspicious when they went to withdraw their funds. Each time, the platform made it impossible for them to move their money. The company repeatedly invoked new methods of keeping people “as they were.” These methods involved ID checks and utility document requirements, though these checks were never required when the customers sought to make deposits.
GPay promised an easy and quick way for people new to the world of cryptocurrency to make deposits and learn about digital trading. In addition, it also claimed it possessed its own mining facility among other false statements and that it would offer expert advice and “computational tools” to anyone seeking to improve their crypto investing knowledge.
In a statement, UK regulators explained:
Customers were encouraged to use GPay’s online trading platform through advertisements that falsely claimed the service was supported or endorsed by entrepreneurs that starred in a prime-time TV show and a high-profile money-saving website.
In addition to television actors, many professional investors and crypto industry executives claim that their likenesses were used to promote the fraudulent activity. One such person is Martin Lewis, the founder of Money Saving Expert. He says that his face and likeness have been used to promote fraudulent crypto schemes for many years, and despite his many efforts to stop this kind of behavior and activity, his attempts have been in vain.
Let This Be a Lesson to All
David Hill – a chief investigator for the Insolvency Service – is looking into the case. He says:
We welcome the court’s decision to wind down GPay, as it will protect anyone else from becoming a victim. This scam should also serve as a warning to anyone who conducts trading online that they should carry out appropriate checks before they invest any money that the company is registered and regulated by the appropriate authorities.
