CRYPTO ROAST

⚡️The Medellín Crypto Mirage: $18M Vanished Into Thin Air 🟠Latin America just got a brutal reminder of how fast “guaranteed crypto profits” can turn into a financial black hole. Colombian authorities dismantled a Medellín-based fraud network that siphoned off nearly 71 billion pesos ($18M) since 2021 — using nothing but cold calls, fake dashboards, and the promise of unimaginable returns. 🟠Their playbook? Classic psychological engineering. The scammers called victims in Colombia, Chile, and Peru, pitched “exclusive crypto portfolios,” and asked for small entry deposits — $200 to $250. Then they showed fabricated dashboards with “profits” multiplying by 5×. Victims thought they struck gold… until they tried to withdraw. 🟠Behind the curtain was a fully structured cybercrime outfit: phone teams, digital “analysts,” money movers, supervisors — even international expansion plans. Fake trading platforms, fake charts, fake balances. Everything engineered to keep victims hooked for months, and in some cases, years. 🟠When withdrawals began, the truth surfaced: the platform vanished, phone numbers died, and the scammers ghosted everyone. Prosecutors traced the operation through digital forensics, server logs, rapid-fire bank transfers, and victim evidence — eventually capturing 14 members of the network. 🟠But the real problem runs deeper. This isn’t a “Colombia issue.” Globally, crypto scams have exploded, fueled by limited regulation and huge gaps in financial literacy. Criminals exploit the same features that make crypto powerful: speed, decentralization, cross-border transfers, anonymity, and irreversible transactions. Once the money moves — it’s gone. 😶 Hundreds of victims from Colombia, Chile, and Peru trusted the dream of fast financial security. What they got instead was a reminder of the most basic truth in finance. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

☠️ $28B in Dirty Crypto: How Scammers, Dictators & Hackers Hijacked the Industry 🟠While the industry goes mainstream and Trump turns World Liberty Financial into a family business, blockchain forensic teams uncovered something darker: at least $28 BILLION in illicit funds slipped onto major exchanges just in the last two years. From North Korea’s Lazarus Group to pig-butchering syndicates in Myanmar — everyone’s using the same on-ramps as legit traders. 🟠Binance — fresh off a $4.3B guilty plea — still received $400M from Huione Group, the Cambodian mega-operation the U.S. calls a “critical node” for global scams. And while Trump pardoned CZ and embraced Binance as a key partner, another $900M linked to a North Korean laundering pipeline hit the platform through a swapping service. 🟠OKX isn’t far behind. The exchange paid $504M to settle violations, then collected $220M more from Huione wallets right after the U.S. sanctions hit. Victims from Minnesota to Myanmar traced their stolen funds straight into OKX, Binance, Bybit and HTX — and that was before the crypto-to-cash shops fired up. 🟠These “cash desks” in Kyiv, Dubai and Hong Kong convert crypto to bills with zero KYC — moving $2.5B+ a year. Investigators watched one operator receive $303K from Binance and hand out envelopes of cash minutes later. No names. No receipts. Just fresh notes and a deleted Telegram chat. 🫰 The ugly truth? Crypto’s biggest exchanges aren’t just passive rails — they’re the bloodstream criminals rely on. And with regulators stepping back, political interests stepping in, and compliance teams overwhelmed, the feedback loop keeps growing. Because the moment dirty money reaches an exchange, the trail goes dark — and the platform still earns its cut in trading fees. This is how a $28B shadow economy grows inside a “regulated” market. And until someone chokes off the on-ramps, the next billion is already on its way. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

💵 Kiwis Are Losing Six Figures to “Next-Gen” Scams — And No One Is Safe 🟠New Zealand is sounding the alarm: scammers have leveled up. Their schemes are now so polished they’re fooling retirees, tech-savvy users, and seasoned investors alike. One man lost $250,000, believing he was signing up for a crypto trading platform — but every “verification step” he completed was actually authorizing transfers to an offshore account. 🟠The Banking Ombudsman says modern scam sites and tools are “extremely sophisticated,” perfectly cloning real platforms, support teams, and trading dashboards that show fake profits. Even the cautious are falling for it. 🟠Losses are exploding. Complaints are down — but the average loss now exceeds $100,000. Victims are pulled in with fake crypto investments, job offers, and tech-support calls. Remote-access scams are stripping people’s accounts clean, from savings to weekly wages. 🟠In one case, a woman nearly sent $14,200 to a “technician” claiming to fix her internet speed. In another, a victim unknowingly became a money mule, after scammers funneled stolen funds through her bank account. Banks froze her funds, refused reimbursement, and only backed down when the ombudsman intervened. 🟠Starting November 30, NZ banks will roll out new protections: real-time scam warnings, high-risk transaction checks, information sharing — and reimbursements up to $500,000 if the bank itself failed to act. 🤝 But even with stronger rules, the #1 defense hasn’t changed: pause, verify, and trust nothing at face value. Scammers have evolved. Now it’s on all of us to make sure they don’t get richer. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

🔤 UPD: The Empire Reaches Japan 🟠New reporting reveals that Prince Group didn’t just spread through Cambodia’s scam compounds — it quietly embedded itself inside Japan’s corporate landscape, even after landing on the U.S. sanctions list. 🟠Since 2022, at least three Japan-based companies linked to Chen Zhi’s network were established in Tokyo, disguised as consulting and real-estate firms. Their real purpose? Authorities now suspect money laundering tied to the same criminal machine behind the Cambodian fraud camps. 🟠These firms held seminars promoting “luxury Cambodian real estate,” leveraging properties allegedly built with proceeds from forced labor, online scam farms, and crypto fraud. One company even openly described itself as a Prince Group subsidiary in official membership filings. 🟠The discovery confirms what investigators feared: Chen Zhi’s $14B shadow empire wasn’t regional — it was global, using Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as financial staging grounds while exploiting international loopholes. 👹 The more we learn, the clearer it becomes: Even after sanctions, collapse, and global exposure, the Prince network kept expanding. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

😈 UPD: “Goddess of Wealth” sentenced to 11 years 🟠Zhimin Qian (aka Yadi Zhang) — the so-called crypto queen who vanished from China with billions in stolen funds — has officially been sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in a UK prison for laundering nearly £5 billion in Bitcoin. 🟠Qian used money stolen from over 100,000 Chinese investors, moved to London under a fake ID, and lived in a £17,000/month mansion while hoarding tens of thousands of BTC. Her operation — disguised as a “medical tech and mining company” — was nothing more than a Ponzi empire. 🟠The Met Police later uncovered one of the largest crypto seizures in UK history, tracing her stash to hard drives filled with Bitcoin. Her assistant, Jian Wen, is already serving 6 years. 🤡 Ironically, Qian’s stolen Bitcoin has skyrocketed 20x since she fled China — and now, the British government might be the biggest winner if victims fail to reclaim the funds. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

🅰️ Mt.Gox, BTC-e, and the Ghosts of Crypto’s Past 🟠The U.S. Department of Justice has charged two Russian nationals — Alexey Bilyuchenko and Alexander Verner — with laundering 647,000 BTC stolen from the infamous Mt.Gox hack. Bilyuchenko is also accused of operating the illegal exchange BTC-e between 2011 and 2017. 🟠Meanwhile in Russia, the Supreme Court unexpectedly overturned a ₽18 billion ($200M) ruling against Bilyuchenko (known locally as Alexey Ivanov), previously convicted for embezzling funds from WEX, the successor to BTC-e. The criminal case and a civil lawsuit filed by World Exchange Services Pte. Ltd. have now been dropped. 🟠Ivanov reportedly admitted to paying ₽5 billion in bribes to high-ranking officials in Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs in exchange for “protection” of WEX operations. His former partner, Dmitry Vasilyev, was extradited from Poland to the U.S. in 2024 on fraud charges. 💭 Mt.Gox and BTC-e were the dark heart of early crypto — and their ghosts still haunt the industry. Every coin that moves from those wallets is a reminder that in crypto, time doesn’t wash away sins — it compounds them. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

⚡️ Madeira Invest Club: Anatomy of a €260M Crypto Scam 🟠The Madeira Invest Club pulled off one of Europe’s biggest Ponzi-style scams — €260M gone, 3,000 victims fooled, and zero real investments behind the curtain. Led by a shady figure known as “CryptoSpain,” the group promised effortless profits from luxury assets — digital art, real estate, whisky, and cars — while simply recycling new investors’ money to pay old ones. 🟠Victims weren’t high-rollers but mostly regular retail investors — young people lured in by Telegram hype and the illusion of easy passive income. Cheap entry, big dreams, and no clue what was coming. 🟠Authorities are calling it a wake-up call: the scheme relied on psychology as much as tech — fake urgency, FOMO, and “authority” figures convincing people to act fast. 💀 In a world where scams now look more professional than startups, staying skeptical is the only alpha left. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

💵 EU’s $689M Crypto Scam Takedown 🟠Europol and Eurojust coordinated a massive cross-border operation, arresting nine people across Cyprus, Spain, Germany, France, and Belgium for running a $689M crypto scam network. The group ran dozens of fake investment platforms — using influencer ads, fake articles, and social media to lure victims. 🟠Victims were promised huge returns, but once funds were sent, scammers laundered them through multiple blockchains. Only a fraction of the money has been recovered: about $919K in bank accounts, $476K in crypto, and $344K in cash. 🟠Europol warned that crypto crime is becoming “increasingly sophisticated,” while TRM Labs says over $53B in scams have been tracked since 2023 — likely just the tip of the iceberg. 💰 From pig-butchering to fake platforms, crypto scams now operate like tech startups — just with better exit plans. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

☠️ Death or Disappearance? The Mystery of Roman Novak in the UAE 🟠Roman Novak — a well-known crypto scammer — and his wife were reportedly kidnapped in the UAE for ransom. When the perpetrators allegedly didn’t get the money, they killed them. Their phones last pinged in Hatta, Oman, and Cape Town — before going completely silent. 🟠Russian citizens suspected of the kidnapping have been detained and are expected to be extradited to St. Petersburg. The wife’s father took custody of their children — but says he doesn’t believe the couple is actually dead. 🟠Many in the crypto scene think Novak staged his own death to escape massive debts. Some even joke that the “murder” might be part of Durov’s Halloween promo campaign for Telegram gifts. 💭 When someone lives knee-deep in scams and shadow schemes, the line between fake and fatal blurs fast. So if you hear “he’s dead” — ask yourself: who benefits from his disappearance? 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

🔤 Zoomers are stealing NFT gifts on Telegram (Mash) 🟠In Moscow, three young guys were arrested after robbing a teenager… through Telegram gifts. 🟠They offered a 16-year-old blogger to film a collab, invited him to meet in the city center, and once he got into their car — started threatening his family. One of them pulled out a gun and fired into the floor to scare him. 🟠The attackers took his phone and transferred all his Telegram NFT gifts — about $650 — to their wallets. The teen, thinking fast, lied that he had 9 million rubles in crypto, accessible only from home. They let him go — and he went straight to the police. 🟠All three were later caught in the Kaluga region. They’re now facing robbery and extortion charges. 🎁 Web3 meets old-school crime — the “gop-stop” just went digital. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

😈 DWF Labs was hacked for $44 million — and kept it quiet for three years 🟠In September 2022, the market maker’s hot wallets were drained of stablecoins. The breach stayed hidden until a user named tanuki42 exposed it, claiming North Korea’s AppleJeus hackers were behind the attack. 🟠The stolen assets were funneled through mixers, with around $30M still untouched — likely “HODLed” somewhere deep in Pyongyang’s cold storage. Nuclear funding in a bull market, right? 🟠ZachXBT couldn’t resist commenting: “DWF hiding a $44M hack? Not surprised.” The twist? DWF Labs is a key market maker for Telegram’s TON ecosystem — the same firm that injected $10M into TON back in 2023. 😱 Surround yourself with the “best,” they said. Turns out, even the most “connected” players in crypto can’t patch a hole that big. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

💵 Stream Finance: $93M vanished — and $285M still on the line 🟠Yesterday, Stream revealed a $93M loss managed by an external fund — a hit that’s now spiraling across the DeFi landscape. Analysts estimate Stream’s total exposure exceeds $285M, putting dozens of partner protocols at risk. 🟠The fallout reaches TelosC, Elixir, MEV Capital, Varlamore, Re7, Enclabs, Mithras, TiD, and Invariant Group, with liquidity tied across Euler, Silo, Morpho, Gearbox, and Enclabs on Ethereum, Plasma, Sonic, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. 🟠The largest exposures belong to Elixir (holding $68M USDC, 65% of deUSD’s backing) and TelosC, controlling over $120M. Even stablecoins like deUSD, scUSD, and veUSD are showing strain. 🟠Withdrawals and deposits are now suspended while Perkins Coie LLP leads an external investigation. Stream claims it’s withdrawing all liquid assets “in the near term,” but contagion fears are already spreading. 💥 In DeFi, transparency is the only firewall — and right now, Stream’s ecosystem looks like it’s burning from the inside out. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

➖ Balancer exploited for over $100M 🟠The Ethereum-based DEX Balancer has suffered a massive exploit, draining over $128 million in digital assets — one of the largest DeFi hacks of 2025. 🟠According to PeckShield and Cyvers, attackers compromised the protocol’s access control, directly manipulating balances and continuing to siphon funds even after detection. 🟠Balancer confirmed the breach, stating that its engineering and security teams are investigating “with high priority.” Before the hack, the platform managed $700M in TVL, now partially frozen as the team struggles to regain control. 💀 Another reminder that even top-tier DeFi protocols are only as strong as their smart contracts — and once access is breached, decentralization offers no safety net. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

☠️ The End of Thodex 🟠Faruk Fatih Özer, founder of the defunct Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, was found dead in solitary confinement at a high-security prison in Tekirdağ. According to local reports, he was discovered hanged in his cell’s bathroom — prosecutors have launched an investigation. 🟠Özer had been sentenced to an astonishing 11,196 years in prison for fraud, money laundering, and running a criminal organization. Thodex collapsed in 2021 after abruptly halting trading, while Özer fled the country with user funds. Investor losses are estimated between $2 and $2.6 billion, making it one of the largest crypto scams in Turkey’s history. 🟠After being extradited from Albania in 2023, Özer became a symbol of the country’s crypto chaos — his case led to strict new regulations, including stablecoin transfer limits, mandatory KYC for transactions above ₺15,000, and withdrawal delays up to 72 hours. 💭 Ironically, the man who once promised to usher in “a new era for Turkish crypto” ended his life in isolation — leaving behind billions in stolen assets and a legacy of fear and regulation. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

🔤 Garden Finance: from Bitcoin bridge to laundering hub 🟠On-chain sleuth ZachXBT revealed that over 25% of Garden Finance’s total activity is tied to stolen crypto. His findings came just days after the platform suffered a $10.8M exploit, where attackers used vulnerabilities across EVM and Solana bridges. 🟠ZachXBT had previously accused Garden of processing funds from major hacks like Bybit and Swissborg without refunding fees, estimating that the project earned six-figure profits purely from illicit flows. 🟠Researchers linked Garden to the legacy of Ren Protocol, which had already been used for laundering by groups such as Conti, Ryuk, and North Korea’s Lazarus. After FTX collapsed, ex-Ren developers, including Jazz Gulati, rebranded the tech into Garden Finance. 🟠According to Elliptic, more than $540M in stolen funds passed through Garden over the last 18 months — much of it tied to Lazarus-run laundering operations. In several cases, stolen ETH was swapped into BTC and bridged through Solana within minutes. 🤝 “This isn’t a DeFi protocol — it’s money-laundering infrastructure dressed up as decentralization,” ZachXBT concluded, comparing Garden to Tornado Cash — but without any of the “honest autonomy.” 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

💵 The $14B Crypto Empire Built on Human Misery 🟠U.S. authorities have charged 37-year-old Chen Zhi — founder of Cambodia’s Prince Group — with orchestrating one of the largest crypto-fraud networks ever uncovered. The Department of Justice seized $14 billion in Bitcoin, calling it the biggest crypto confiscation in history. 🟠Chen built an empire of banks, real-estate towers, and casinos, presenting himself as a philanthropist and royal adviser. Behind the facade — an alleged transnational network of online scams, money laundering, human trafficking, and torture inside “fraud compounds” across Cambodia. 🟠The U.S. and U.K. sanctioned over 128 shell companies and 17 individuals tied to his organization. Even as banks collapse and governments distance themselves, Cambodia’s elites — long connected to Chen — now scramble to rewrite history. 💀 The man who once called himself “Cambodia’s Prince of Progress” has vanished. His empire remains — a monument to how greed, politics, and crypto fused into a $14 billion shadow industry. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

😈 A new scam through AML checks? Fresh case from DMs 🟠A guy runs his dirty (and loaded) wallet through AMLBot. Brand-new Telegram account, only one chat — the bot. 🟠Five minutes later, someone slides into his DMs pretending to be AMLBot support: “Your crypto has high AML risk, we must verify. Send a full report” — plus a “secure” link. Reality: a drainer ready to vacuum the whole wallet. 🟠What makes this different: the scammer knew exactly which address was checked. Not a random phishing spray — targeted, with full context. 🟠And here’s the twist: AML checkers are perfect honeypots. They log wallet connections, cluster addresses, record IPs, and even payment details for checks. So if someone gets access to that data — or claims they do — you’re toast. 🟠AMLBot support, of course, denies any CRM breach. Sure. We’ve all heard that line before. 🤖 The lesson? AML checks aren’t just about wallet risk — they expose your risk. You ask, “Is my address clean?” Someone else answers, “Thanks, now I know where to hit you.” 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

🔥 Booking.com + “Crypto Summit in Dubai” 🟠CoinGecko CEO Bobby Ong just dropped a warning: scammers are blasting fake Booking.com emails inviting people to an “Exclusive Crypto Travel Summit” in Dubai. 🟠The email flexes a star lineup — Vitalik Buterin, Brian Armstrong, a “strategic partnership” between Booking.com and Coinbase — everything to make it look elite and urgent. Only one problem: the application deadline… already passed Someone rushed the copy-paste job. 🟠The goal is clear: push you onto a phishing page → steal credentials → drain accounts. Booking.com acknowledged the issue and launched an investigation. 🟠This isn’t isolated — it’s part of a growing wave of impersonation scams in crypto. Recently, Binance warned about fake “listing agents” and scammers posing as customer support to hijack API keys. 💭 Real talk: if you get invited to a crypto summit starring Buterin, Armstrong, and your cat… don’t click Register — click Delete. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

⚡️ Scammers drained over 100 Europeans via fake crypto exchanges 🟠Two guys from Vinnytsia ran Telegram-promoted “exchangers” and pretended to be super-compliant. Their trick? Asking users for their seed phrase “for AML verification.” Yes. That seed phrase. The “if you share it — you’re wrecked” one. 🟠The moment victims entered the phrase, their coins got vacuumed into scammer wallets and the chat disappeared faster than liquidity in a rugpull. 🟠One of the biggest cases: a German dude lost 60,000 USDT in February — simply because he thought extra compliance = extra legit. Spoiler: extra compliance = extra f*cked. 🍾 The irony? Europeans are so exhausted by KYC/AML bureaucracy that when someone asks for their private keys… they think it’s just “proper regulation.” Meanwhile, scammers are popping champagne. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets

☠️ Bunni DEX is officially shutting down after an $8.4M exploit 🟠The attackers exploited a rounding error in one of Bunni’s smart contracts, draining over $8 million and leaving the protocol financially crippled. The team says relaunching would require massive audit and dev costs — money they simply don’t have. 🟠Users can still withdraw their assets for now, and the remaining treasury will be distributed among $BUNNI, $LIT, and $veBUNNI holders. Team wallets are excluded from the snapshot. 🟠Bunni’s contracts have also been relicensed under MIT, allowing anyone to reuse their innovations like LDFs and surge fees — their final parting gift to DeFi. ⭐️ Another DeFi dream gone down the drain. One rounding bug, and a whole generation of “next-gen liquidity” vanished overnight. 📱 Token Report (X) — your daily pulse on crypto and global markets