We have in numerous instances discussed crypto investment scams aka Pig Butchering Scams that originate from China. It is a kind of scam where people, usually men, are lured into trading crypto on fake platforms by Chinese scammers. A scam victim reached out to us recently wanting to share their story of how they and their brother fell for this scam on a fake crypto trading platform called Sunbit1.
The story started with a random call from Olivia, a Chinese woman who called my brother Jeff and introduced herself as a former employee of his. After some small talk, she led the conversation subject to cryptocurrencies (particularly Bitcoin). It seems that the target of these people is to acquire people who are interested in crypto or stock trading market. My brother has been trading stocks for years.
Olivia stated that she also used to trade stocks, but she doesn’t waste her time anymore with stock trading. She said that trading with Bitcoin options is much safer and more profitable and not as time-consuming as stock trading. She has been trading crypto for a few years already and has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. She doesn’t like trading with risks and the way she trades is 100% guaranteed to make a profit.
She has invited my brother to invest a small amount of money and experience by himself how easy trading with bitcoin options is. Jeff, who was just about to retire, was looking for a small income to compensate for the highly reduced income after his retirement. Olivia helped Jeff set up an account on crypto.com and Sunbit1 to download the app and install it on his phone.
The first trade did not need to be more than $500. Olivia showed Jeff how he can profit $300 for 6 trades, each a $50 investment, within 5 minutes to bet whether in those 5 minutes the transaction goes bullish or bearish. 5 out of 6 bets were successful, earning Jeff a profit of $200 within just 30 minutes (each win was rewarded with 40$, 10$ (20%) fee for Sunbit1).
Olivia avoided any telephone or visual calls. She preferred to chat instead of voice or face-to-face conference, supposedly because of a bad experience she had with video chat due to an accident. She was also prepared to send a doctor's attestation for that.
When we take a look at Sunbit1’s website, there are several red flags that Jeff could have identified if he was aware of this scam.
Sunbit1.com’s domain registration information shows it is a new website with no credibility. Further, the registrant’s details are provided in Chinese. This is an automatic red flag because not only is China a high-risk country but cryptocurrency trading is still banned in China as of 2022. Therefore, there is no way that Sunbit1 can operate from China legally.
Even though Sunbit1 clearly did not exist before November 2021, the website states that it has been active since 2018 which is a blatant lie.
The site claims that Sunbit1’s “core members of the team come from well-known enterprises such as Google, Microsoft, Alibaba and Tencent”. However, not even a single team member’s name is mentioned anywhere on the website. It is obvious that the site is not run by professionals.
Sunbit1 is clearly not even a real organization, as only a free Gmail ID ‘sunbit.me@gmail.com’ has been provided for contact.
Checking Sunbit1’s reviews on ScamAdviser also reveals that several people have been scammed on this fake crypto trading platform in the same way that Jeff got scammed.
Going back to Jeff’s story…
Sense of trading and greed has convinced my brother and later me (recommended by my brother to her because we trade with stocks together almost every day) to believe Olivia in what she is doing, and she stated always that she is doing this because of friendship and wanted to meet with us soon.
She would teach us how to trade by ourselves but in the beginning, she would consult us to not lose our funds. For the next trade, my brother would need $3,000 and not $500. So, if my brother and I want to trade we have to transfer to Sunbit1 $3,000 via Crypto.com.
In the next trade, we again won 5 out of 6 bets each $200 which means a $160 reward per bet ($800 win). And she has continued to pursue us to increase the investment for the next trading session (1x per week). The next trade would need $10,000 to participate in. If we don’t have enough funds, we are not able to participate due to the trading volume.
She stated always that she knows the time and how to trade from her uncle in China and would teach us to find the so-called “golden nodes” (more than 6 Bets with the same result e.g Bullish or Bearish). This should reduce the risk of loss.
Unfortunately, I have invested the $10,000 and have taken part in the next trade. To not lose Jeff, Olivia let him participate with $3,000 because his money couldn’t be transferred in time to Crypto.com and later on to Sunbit1.
She told me to lock up the funds to get interest on them every day from Sunbit1, which I did (every day ~$50). In the next trade, I would win again 5 out of 6 trades each $1,000 ($3,000 win = 5x$800 -$1000 loss for one bet).
The problem started when we wanted to withdraw some money from Sunbit1.
The platform didn’t allow us to withdraw money because of the risk of cashing out. The transaction volume was not according to the standards. We had to either recharge the account with the same amount of asset that we have or trade with the same volume. This alarmed us that something is wrong with the platform. What they demand is not logical.
In the meanwhile, Olivia has asked us to increase the investment to $30,000-$50,000 to be able to participate in bigger markets. If we would not have enough funds, we couldn’t participate. We have been investigating in the meanwhile because they did not let us pick up our money and hesitated to follow Olivia’s plan to increase the funds.
She just let us wait and didn’t trade with us anymore and warned us not to trade on our own because we would lose all our money. On the other hand, if we want to withdraw money we have to either recharge the account or do enough transactions (1X of the whole asset).
Finally, Jeff decided to start trading and rescue at least part of the money. We both have traded according to the experience that we have in day-trading and reading charts etc. and could do more than 13 trades within a few hours and not lose all of them.
He started trading with ~$2,400 and after 13 bets - each $200 - the remaining funds were $2201.57. This should be enough according to the online service to withdraw the money from Sunbit1 but the withdrawal was declined again. This time they said that Jeff needs to do transactions 2X of his assets. It was clear that they don’t want to release the money to be cashed out, but Jeff wanted to continue and do another 12 trades so that there is no excuse left for the Online support to withhold the money.
After 6 transactions, we realized that they manipulate the report of the transactions in his transaction history. Out of 6 bets, 4 were successful but they reported all 6 as failed. We were now pretty sure that they manipulate the transactions.
We have seen during our bets that other people with high amounts e.g $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 and $100,000 have participated in the bets and those transactions won in benefit of the trader like magic. In the transaction details, you can see that the difference between the opening and closing is ~1$ always.
Coincidently Jeff was participating once in a bet with $200 together with another person with $20,000. We have observed that in the last seconds the transaction which was bullish turned to bearish. I have saved the snapshots and documented the Chart and bet dashboard which shows the manipulation.
I have all the conversations and many snapshots of the conversations with the online service and Olivia. I also have snapshots of the Sunbit1 platform which documents the truth of my story.
Olivia sends several pictures through which she wants to present her wealth. She states that she is living in Florida in the US. Not sure about that looking at her Chinese mobile phone. According to Olivia, her uncle lives in China and big supporter of Sunbit1.
Olivia tries to impress with the luxurious life she has. She owns jewellery, has a big luxury car with a driver, she plans to work just until she is 40 and then retire, she has a villa in Florida at the seaside and more. She has prepared photos of her shopping sprees on her profile. Flirting and entertaining you with some stories are part of the plan.
[Editors Note: “Olivia” is not a real person and the pictures are likely to be stolen from a random person or Chinese celebrity’s profile.]
The process was that Olivia advised us to bet how much and in which direction - Bullish (up) or Bearish (down). Depending on our investment funds, we could bet with higher or lower amount. With $10,000 I could bet in batches of $1,000 and my brother with $3,000 could bet in batches of $200. Jeff bet $1,000 one time and his transaction was cancelled by the operator. It means they have the ability to manipulate the transactions.
This is the report of the financial settlement history. All successful bets are signed as failure. The report was available with a delay so we couldn’t see what is happening. Jeff realized it through his available funds amount and stopped trading after 6 bets.
We have observed few transactions with higher amounts of $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 and $100,000. All successful Bets. If you look at the opening and closing amounts the difference is very small (~1$). An indication that the transaction was turned in the last second.
We tried to pull out our money from Sunbit1 as soon as we figured out that it is a scam platform. Of course, we tried to not show our awareness and stayed calm to avoid big conflicts. Unfortunately, Sunbit1 has locked our assets to not be able to withdraw funds.
We have been naive and greedy and haven’t thought and investigated twice to check if the broker is a scam. Most probably, the Platform will be renamed in the near future since they have registered it for one year. Also, after our investigations, we couldn’t find real information about them. That is why I have taken the time to inform the world on the Internet about them.
I have no hope that I will get my money (more than $10,000 still blocked) back but wanted to share these “lessons learned” with the world to avoid more victims of such scams. I will send this story with a letter to Chinese Embassy where the Platform is registered and also warn them that such people damaging the reputation of their country.
I have been to China and know how safe their country is. China takes care of the safety of its citizens. It should be necessary and of their interest that they also care about the safety of the world and don’t allow cybercrime out of their country towards other countries. I hope that the Chinese government investigates and stops these people. Most probably they do also other cyber frauds and money laundering.
