Former Chinese billionaire Yang Bin was jailed for 6 years in Singapore for allegedly organizing a crypto mining investment scam

Comparative news, according to a report by Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, Yang Bin, a Dutch national who once ranked second on the Forbes list of China's richest people, set up a local investment company in Singapore to carry out a “Ponzi scheme”, falsely claiming that he cooperated with a cryptocurrency mining company, owned a large number of mining machines, and recruited three people to conspire to defraud more than 700 people for a total of 6.7 million Singapore dollars. After one of his accomplices went to jail, the mastermind also went to jail. The mastermind is Yang Bin from the Netherlands. He was the chairman of A&A Blockchain Innovation Private Limited (A&A for short) at the time of the crime. Facing 19 charges, including fraud and violation of the Employment of Foreign Workers Act, he pleaded guilty to eight of them in the Singapore National Court on August 26. After considering the remaining matters, the judge sentenced him to six years in prison and a fine of 16,000 Singapore dollars.

According to the circumstances of the case, the defendant set up an A&A in April 2021 to provide an investment plan for cryptocurrency mining. A&A falsely claims to have cooperated with a cryptocurrency mining company in Yunnan, China, and owns 70% of the latter's 300,000 mining machines; the mining machines can mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. A&A promises investors that they can earn 0.5% of investment profits every day. In fact, A&A did not cooperate with this Chinese company, nor did it own a mining machine. This is actually a “Ponzi scheme”; A&A uses investment funds from new investors to pay “profits” to old investors.

Earlier, on August 10, Wang Xinghong, CTO of the Singaporean company A&A, was sentenced to 5 years in prison for participating in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.