JPEX Update: Crypto Exchange’s Victim Toll Rises As More Suspects Are Arrested

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The town of Hong Kong is going through what’s reportedly its “largest-ever fraud case” because the variety of victims within the JPEX saga continues to rise, with native police making extra arrests in reference to the case.

The JPEX Case

In response to a report by Hong Kong Free Press (HFRP), 2,086 individuals have been recognized as far as victims of the crypto alternate JPEX’s fraudulent actions. The police are additionally mentioned to have arrested three extra people who find themselves suspected of being conspirators within the monetary fraud, which has prompted traders to lose over $166 million.

A type of arrested is former lawyer and crypto influencer Joseph Lam, who occurs to have shut ties with the crypto alternate. These arrests deliver the whole variety of arrests to 11, and the investigation is alleged to be ongoing, with extra arrests anticipated to be made.

The JPEX saga started when Hong Kong’s monetary regulator, The Securities and Futures Fee (SFC), launched a assertion on September 13 warning traders that JPEX wasn’t licensed to function a digital asset buying and selling platform (VATP) within the metropolis. It additionally talked about that there was no pending software by the alternate to function in Hong Kong.

This warning was launched in rebuttal of the alternate’s illustration on its web site that it’s “a licensed and acknowledged platform to facilitate the buying and selling of digital asset and digital foreign money.” JPEX additionally claimed on its web site that it was licensed by sure regulators overseas, which is outwardly a lie.

In its assertion, the SFC talked about that it had obtained complaints from retail traders of their incapability to withdraw their property from their JPEX accounts or them discovering that their account stability had been “decreased or altered.”

Following this, a person on the X (previously Twitter) platform famous that the crypto alternate had hiked its withdrawal price to $999, most likely in a bid to dissuade customers from withdrawing their property, because it additionally capped the utmost withdrawal restrict at $1,000.

In the meantime, on September 17, JPEX launched a assertion the place it blamed the liquidity crunch it was going through on its partnered third-party market makers who had “maliciously frozen funds.” These market makers had apparently accomplished this due to the regulatory scrutiny and unfavorable information that the alternate was going through.

JPEX Not Backing Down

In a assertion launched on September 21, JPEX appeared to counsel that there was little or nothing the authorities may do towards it as its staff members are “in unknown locations world wide.” In response to the alternate, it has by no means operated a “bodily company construction” as it’s an “impediment to selling cryptocurrency globally.”

The crypto alternate additionally alluded to the SFC’s unfair therapy because it acknowledged that the Fee had handled it “with imprecise pointers and unfounded costs.” It famous that the SFC had additionally instructed telecommunications suppliers to dam customers’ entry to the platform.

On account of these “unfair bureaucratic practices,” the alternate has determined to rework right into a DAO within the hopes that this may assist it get “out of bother and get again on monitor as quickly as potential.”

In response to the assertion, JPEX “will proceed to function unswervingly” it doesn’t matter what occurs. The alternate’s web site remains to be operational on the time of writing.