Exposed: Telegram OTC Scam Drains $50M Through ’Too-Good-To-Be-True’ Altcoin Discounts
Crypto's dark underbelly strikes again—this time via Telegram's shadow markets. Fraudsters just pulled off a $50 million heist by dangling discounted altcoins like digital candy. Here's how they did it.
The Bait:
'Exclusive' OTC deals promising 20-30% below market rates. The catch? Victims had to pay upfront—then watched their 'bargains' vanish into thin air.
The Playbook:
Classic pump-and-dump tactics, turbocharged by encrypted messaging. Scammers used burner accounts across 15+ channels, rotating coin picks to avoid detection.
The Irony:
These 'discounted' tokens mostly belonged to projects already flagged for sketchy tokenomics. Because nothing says 'safe investment' like buying dubious assets from strangers on an app best known for meme channels.
Regulators? Still playing whack-a-mole. Meanwhile, the scammers reportedly funneled proceeds into—wait for it—privacy coins. A fitting end to this circus of greed and credulity.
Scam revealed by Aza Ventures Bulletin on Telegram
Following a few rounds of OTC sales, the deals expanded in size, again including Axelar, NEAR, GRASS, and other tokens. The last offer came on June 1, for FLUID tokens.
Token teams started being aware of the potential loss, with SUI and EGold (EGLD) warning about the OTC deals. The teams explained there is no program or deal for DEEP discounts and vesting.
Even on-chain investigator ZachXBT warned about the risk of doing deals on Telegram, offered by an unknown VC fund. Despite this, the subscribers showed trust and demand for the deals, due to the track record of some of the participants. Until recently, the team sent out excuses that the deals WOULD go through, citing project delays and technicalities.
In the past two weeks, the main source of deals, referred to as Source 1, disappeared from the OTC channel Aza Ventures Bulletin. The channel announced that part of the deals were in fact Ponzi schemes, while others were legitimate and some value could be salvaged. Aza Ventures is a Tier-4 crypto VC fund, with 71 investments in relatively small projects.
The channel admin is now dealing with the three main originators of OTC deals, aiming to recoup the funds by the end of June. Authorities and exchanges have been notified, with the possibility to freeze funds.
Up to $50M have been taken from buyers, which include whales, KOLs and other projects. The deals included multiple trending tokens, including KAVA Fluid, OG, Aethir, Movement, The Sandbox, Ronin, Celestia, Wormhole, Arkham, Berachain, and more. The offers showed awareness of crypto trends, offering some of the hottest trending altcoins and projects.
Scammer linked to Binance-listed crypto project
One of the biggest blows against trust in crypto is the person referred to as Source 1. For now, the channel is guarding their identity, though there are claims the seller is also the founder of another significant crypto project, with a reputation and a listing on Binance.
Initially, the OTC deals channel will not dox the identity of Source 1, aiming to use the leverage for recouping as much value for investors as possible.
“I want to be clear: the only reason I am not currently disclosing Source 1’s identity is because I believe keeping this confidential for now gives us the best chance to recoup both your and my investments. If, at a later stage, the community feels it is better to dox them and proceed differently, I am open to that. But at this point, disclosure could jeopardize recovery efforts,” announced the channel admin.
However, Source 1 may have leaked his real personality, by trying to differentiate his social profile from the scam. Recently, Ravindra Kumar posted on X, stating he was not involved with OTC deals. Kumar is one of the founders of Self Chain (SLF), formerly known as Frontier.
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