Chinese Police have arrested the founding members of an alleged cryptocurrency pyramid scheme following several weeks of investigation. Police in the Chinese city of Xi’an shut down the operation that is claimed to have already obtained 86 million yuan ($13 million) from over 13,000 participants in the scheme.

According to the report by the local Huashang News, the scheme has already affected members in 31 provinces and municipalities across the country despite only launching on March 28th of this year.

The report describes how the scheme sold a cryptocurrency – DBTC – at a token price of 13 yuan ($0.48) and promised new members returns of 80,000 (c.$13,000) yuan a day for an initial investment of 3 million yuan ($480,000).

The police added that to bolster their international appeal to investors, the operation – linked to the Hong Kong-registered DTC Holding – spent 30,000 yuan to hire a foreign-looking man as chairman of DTC.

To further convince investors, the project organised promotional events in several cities across China and in Cambodia and promised DBTC listings on several Chinese exchanges.

After arousing the suspicions of the of the Xi’an Public Security Bureau on April 4th, the Economic Investigation Department launched an investigation into the scheme and its alleged ringleader going by the name of Zheng.

Arresting nine suspects in total, the police believe that suspects had been planning the scheme since October 2017 and had hoped to capitalise on the popularity of Blockchain to attract investors.

Chinese Crypto Fraud

This latest alleged fraud is by no means the first to hit the news in China.

Crypto-scams such as the fraudulent Gemcoin Ponzi scheme of 2015 affected many Chinese and Chinese-American investors, and the infamous $1.5 billion dollar EDG pyramid scheme of January 2017 have pushed Chinese law enforcement to take a tough stance towards crypto-fraud.

The Ministry of Public Security in a statement on Jan 19th affirmed their commitment to stamping out this kind of financial fraud, making a commitment to: