The shameless greed-based exit scam experiment FOMO3D claims it has paid out its massive cryptocurrency jackpot to one lucky individual, whose identity remains unknown – only some don’t think it was won fairly.

In a tweet spotted by ETHnews , Team Just, the developers behind the exit scam gave a brief but congratulatory message to an unknown Ethereum wallet owner, after becoming the lucky recipient of 10,469 ETH. At the time of writing this is about $2.8 million.

For those out of the loop, FOMO3D is a sort of Ponzi-gambling crossover scheme, built on Ethereum based smart contracts.

The developers of the game position it as an experiment in greed. The core premise of the game is quite simple. There is a pot of Ethereum, there are keys to that pot, and there is a countdown timer.

Players of the game buy keys to that pot of Ethereum, when they do, the pot grows in value and some time is added to the clock. When the clock hits zero, the last person to buy a key, wins the pot of cryptocurrency.

Even though it seemed like the clock would never hit zero, it did, and someone appears to have won. Unlike other exit scams, this one actually paid out.

The purported proof of this $2.8 million jackpot – which can be seen here – shows the transaction recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, under the ‘Internal Transactions’ tab. This is common for transactions associated with smart contracts as the tokens are effectively held in a secure piggy bank; when the smart contract is executed, the recipient is simply afforded the opportunity to “drain the pot” for themselves.

The sender address shows that the funds were indeed sent from a smart contract that has been tagged as “gambling” and “FOMO3D.” So currently, all sign posts point towards it being a legitimate payout.

However, the tweet has also become a place for many to vent their disbelief that the win was legitimate, claiming that the winner managed to cheat their way to success.

Some have claimed that a miner was able to censor a block, which allowed them to prevent other key purchases from being accepted before the timer ran out, leaving them to make away with the winnings.

As ETHnews points out, there were a number of key purchases that weren’t acknowledged. In the block immediately after the winning bid, there were 103 unsuccessful bid attempts. If one of these had gone through, there is the very real possibility this game could still be going on.

The transaction history associated to their Ethereum address shows they were making regular transfers of between 0.0007 and 0.0022 ETH every minute or so in the day that followed their FOMO3D win. All of these transactions have been going into various other smart contracts, one had a value of over $4 million.

Whoever the winner is, wherever the winner is, with most of the funds already siphoned off into other smart contracts, they don’t seem that keen on HODLing .

$11M Indian cryptocurrency scam investigation stalls as victims avoid testifying

It seems there’s news of a new cryptocurrency scam every week. Usually, as victims come forward the scam is revealed and the perpetrators get caught. However, one scam investigation in India has hit a dead end.

Subhashchand Jewria encouraged people to invest in their virtual currency, ATC Coin. Claiming after an 18 month “lock-in” period the cryptocurrency could be used for online shopping, but nothing ever materialized.

A year after Jewria’s arrest, the investigation is stalled as no victims have come forward, the Indian Express reports.

Several of the scam’s victims were identified during the investigation, but when asked, none provided details of their losses to the police.

This is particularly alarming given the scammer was able to generate over $11 million (840,000,000 Indian Rupees), yet many victims refused to corroborate with police.

Detectives working the case believe victims haven’t come forward as they may face intense scrutiny due to lack of regulation and law surrounding cryptocurrency.

Perhaps victims might also be hesitant to make themselves known as India’s central bank passed a nationwide ban on cryptocurrency businesses earlier this year.

While the perpetrator has been charged and their funds have been frozen, with no victims to testify, the case might sit on rocky shores for some time.

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China to crack down on 124 offshore cryptocurrency exchanges

It appears that cryptocurrency businesses are on the Chinese authorities’ radar again.

China is blocking access to the websites of 124 offshore cryptocurrency exchange desks in the country, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported today. The ban will effectively stop the operations of these exchanges in China.

According to state-run Shanghai Securities News, the authorities are also continuing to monitor and close down websites of domestic cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Businesses accepting cryptocurrencies as a means of payment are on the list as well.

The news comes only a day after China’s leading social media platform WeChat banned several prominent cryptocurrency media outlets from its platform. The outlets were purportedly creating hype around cryptocurrencies and ICOs in violation of Chinese law.

SCMP states that it couldn’t confirm the reason for the clampdown with the Chinese central bank, but it does speculate that the rising concerns over financial stability in the country could be the inspiration behind this latest wave of regulatory action against cryptocurrencies.

It is worth noting that cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs have been outlawed in China for a while.  The authorities initially banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) in September last year, and soon followed up by banning both local and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges. However, the authorities have struggled to stop businesses from running in the country, and China has seen multiple cryptocurrency-related frauds over the last year.

The success of this latest effort also remains to be seen, as most of these bans on websites can be easily overcome with the help of virtual private network (VPN) services and privacy-oriented browsers.