Chief tech officer who was 'key cog' in crypto investment scam jailed

Company running a Ponzi scheme induced 12 investors to part with more than 1.8m

- Shaffiq Alkhatib

He was the chief technological officer (CTO) of a firm offering a cryptocurrency investment scheme and which claimed that it had 300,000 physical mining machines that could "mine cryptocurrency" to generate revenue.

However, the company identified as A&A Blockchain Innovation did not have these machines and was, in fact, running a Ponzi scheme when it induced 12 investors to part with more than $1.8 million.

But in total, the prosecution said that between May 2021 and February 2022, A&A attracted investments from more than 700 investors in Singapore, amounting to around $6.7 million.

According to the Coinbase website, mining is the process that several cryptocurrencies use to generate new coins and verify new transactions.

Chinese national Wang Xinghong, 40, whom the prosecution described as a "key cog" in the investment scam, pleaded guilty to six cheating charges and was sentenced to five years' jail on Aug 6.

He had told investigators that he received around US$100,000 (S$132,500) from his involvement in A&A.

Wang has made no restitution and the prosecution said that as A&A operated a money circulation scheme, some of the affected investors were paid returns using money from other investors.