Popular YouTuber orchestrates crypto scam to steal US$500,000 from fans and shamelessly buy a new Tesla with the money ^↺

Cryptocurrency scams are undoubtedly on the rise. In December, we reported on striking statistics which claimed that such scams and rug pulls caused at least US$7.7 billion in damages to crypto holders in 2021. While many of these dubious activities are conducted by anonymous fraudsters, one more or less famous YouTuber has now apparently also joined their ranks and promptly used the stolen money to buy a new Tesla.

According to a report by Kotaku, the well-known streamer Ice Poseidon has managed to steal a whopping US$500,000 from his fans by convincing them to invest in CxCoin, a cryptocurrency that he apparently created solely for his pump and dump scheme. After he reassured his fans that this would be a long-term investment, the streamer who goes by the real name of Paul Denino pulled the rug which caused the CxCoin cryptocurrency to nosedive to a value of basically nothing.

Denino apparently netted US$500,000 with this scam, but he used US$200,000 to pay the developers who helped him in orchestrating the scheme. He allegedly used some of the remaining US$300,000 to treat himself with a brand-new Tesla and ironically even live-streamed on YouTube when he picked up the car last summer. When he was confronted with these allegations by another YouTuber who calls himself Coffeezilla, he purportedly admitted the cryptocurrency scam but quickly tried to put the blame on his over-emotional fans while insisting that he would keep most of the money to himself, even though he technically could return all of it to the victims.

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