Fake Ponzi Scheme Reportedly Raises $100K in a Bid to Boost Awareness

Popular cryptocurrency influencer and a well-known member of the community – FatManTerra – took it to Twitter to reveal that he deliberately created a fake Ponzi scheme to raise funds.

The initiative supposedly saw upwards of $100,000 worth of BTC in investments.

In two hours, I received over one hundred DMs. I raised 3.45% BTC from Twitter and 2 BTC from Discord – over $100k, with more requests flooding in by the minute.

• The original tweet that promoted the fake scheme read:

Received access to a high-yield BTC farm based on a private carry trade operated by an up-and-coming fund. I’ve maxed out what I could, so there’s some leftover allocation and I thought I’d pass it alonge – priority will be given to UST victims. DM for more details if interested.

• FatManTerra said that he is getting tons of messages and that it was “far too easy to scam people in crypto.”
• Ultimately, he revealed that this was a fake scheme and that his goal was to raise awareness.

While I used plenty of buzzwords and put on a very convincing act on all platforms, I made sure to keep the investment details intentionally obscure – I didn’t name the fund and I didn’t describe the trade – no one knew where the yield was coming from. But people still invested.

• The influencer also said that everyone who sent money has been fully refunded and that there hasn’t been any investment.

Risk-free high yields don’t exist.

• Yet, some are calling him out for his tweets, arguing that he was actually trying to scam people and that he got cold feet in trying to do so.