WoToken was a mobile app Ponzi scheme launched by Chinese scammers last year.
Last month the scam’s co-founders, Gao Yudong, Li Qibing, Wang Xiaoying and Tian YongBo, were each sentenced by a Chinese court to prison sentences ranging from two years six months to eight years six months.
As reported by Sina on November 3rd;
Defendant Gao Yudong committed the crime of organizing and leading pyramid schemes and was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison and a fine of RMB 2 million.
Li Qibing committed the crime of organizing and leading pyramid schemes and was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined RMB 1.5 million;
Wang Xiaoying committed the crime of organizing and leading pyramid schemes and was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined RMB 1.5 million;
Tian Yongbo committed the crime of organizing and leading pyramid schemes and was sentenced to two years and six months in prison and fined RMB 1 million;
Li Guomin committed the crime of concealing criminal proceeds and was sentenced to three years imprisonment, suspended for five years, and fined 100,000 yuan;
Tang Xiaohua committed the crime of harboring and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with one year’s probation.
In our own WoToken review, some guy going by Edward Wu (aka Edward Ng) was claiming to be WoToken’s founder. He was also the CEO of a shell company called 1WorldBlockahin.
Wu’s LinkedIn profile is still up. 1WorldBlockchain’s website advises the company is ‘undergo(ing) a complete update of all our systems, projects, products’.
The company’s official Twitter account was abandoned in January 2019.
Whether Wu is one of the jailed co-founders or was a Boris CEO actor remains unclear.
Chinese authorities have established there were 715,249 WoToken affiliate investors. Together, based on the then value of cryptocurrency invested, WoToken victims lost $1.18 billion USD.