PESHAWAR: The cybercrime wing of Federal Investigation Agency revealed that scammers have stolen over Rs18 billion in cryptocurrency scams in Pakistan through mobile phone applications registered with Binance.
“Billions of rupees were swindled from Pakistanis through online applications linked to Binance, an application for global crypto-currencies exchange,” the FIA’s cyber crimes wing official informed the media. The wing has issued notices to the General Manager of Binance in Pakistan and its headquarters in the United States and the Cayman Islands. The notices also alleged that terror financing and money laundering was also underway through cryptocurrency.
The FIA unveiled that eleven mobile phone applications that were registered with Binance have deprived Pakistanis of their hard-earned money. These mobile phone applications were abruptly shut down in December and Pakistanis are now unable to access their finance. “Thousands of Pakistanis had invested billions of rupees in these applications,” the FIA cybercrime wing said. “Each application had 5 to 30,000 investors with investments of up to 100,000 dollars.”
Applications initially facilitated trading in virtual currencies, investments in bitcoins, Ethereum, Dogecoin etc through Binance. The FIA alleged that there is evidence of gambling on crypto currencies through telegram accounts.
The cybercrime wing officials further said that the FIA had found 26 suspected block-chain wallets of BINANS on which money was transferred and sought details of these blockchain wallets from BINANS. “BINANS is an easy source for terror financing and money laundering, hopefully, it will co-operate with Pakistan in investigating these financial crimes,” the FIA officials said.
Last year in September, the President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), revealed that Pakistanis have $20 billion in crypto currency. The federation has requested the government to allow users to cash it in Pakistan instead of Dubai. The chamber said that India has already made rules but Pakistan has not yet regulated cryptocurrency.