Pakistani officials have announced last January 6, 2022, via press release on Twitter that they will be conducting an investigation with Binance after a suspected scam worth around $100 million. This comes after several complaints surfaced from Binance users in the country, saying that the platform asked them to transfer their funds into unknown third-party crypto wallets which caused the scam to occur in the first week of January.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) will be leading the investigation and have since reached out to the head of Binance in Pakistan, Hamza Khan. The goal of this initial meeting is to determine whether Khan is involved in the scam or unaware of it.
According to reports made by Dawn and Coin Telegraph, the FIA will be asking Khan and the rest of the staff at the Binance headquarters in the US and Cayman Islands a set of questions through a handout. The data acquired will be used to help further the case and find out those responsible.
According to the initial statements of the victims, the FIA were able to identify 11 mobile apps that suddenly stopped operations when the scam took place. Victims said that these apps lured them to make deposits through the Binance platform and transfer funds to the accounts linked to these apps.
There were also several crypto wallets considered to be possible places where the fraudulent funds were transferred.
‘At least 26 suspect blockchain wallet addresses (Binance wallet address) have been identified where fraudulent amounts may have been transferred. A letter has been written to Binance Holdings Limited to give the details of these blockchain wallet accounts as well as to debit block them’, the FIA said with regards to their findings last January 6, 2022, through a tweet published by unit leader Imran Riaz.
Binance soon issued their response to the notice through a statement on Twitter last January 7, 2022. ‘We do not comment on specific matters with regulatory and law enforcement authorities. However, as a matter of policy, our general approach is to cooperate with investigations wherever possible’.
The statement continued by saying that Binance has always worked to avoid situations such as this and will be working closely with Pakistan’s FIA to solve the problem at hand.
As of now, only users based in Pakistan have been recorded to have problems such as this. Binance has gone through other issues in the past but has reassured users and regulators that they are compliant with all the necessary rules and investigations needed from them.
There are currently no developments as to how the investigation is going and whether or not Binance is truly the platform where the scam occurred.
Stay up to date with all the latest cryptocurrency news and updates here at Cryptoshimbun!