A cryptocurrency platform promoted by world stars turned out to be a fraudulent scheme

Brazilian law enforcement agencies have uncovered a large-scale cryptocurrency pyramid scheme called Forcount, which offered users to invest in the Mindexcoin token. In addition to ordinary customers, Brazilian celebrities who advertised the company became victims of the fraudulent scheme.

According to local publications Globo and UOL, the founder of Forcount was a fraudster nicknamed the Bitcoin Sheik, whose real name is Francisley Valdevino da Silva. Customers were offered to purchase a Mindexcoin token and receive 20% return on their investment every month. Mindexcoin had no market value and was not listed on any exchange.

One of the victims of the scam was Brazilian model and TV presenter Sasha Meneghel, who invested her own money in the fraudulent token and encouraged her fans to do the same. In addition to Meneghel, several football players invested in the pyramid scheme, whose names have not yet been disclosed. According to rough estimates, the total amount of losses of Forcount investors is 769 million.

Law enforcement agencies managed to get into one of Forcount’s offices and seized gold bars, hundreds of thousands in fiat, and luxury watches. The author of the Brazilian Ponzi scheme, Francisley Valdevino da Silva, has not yet been found, but law enforcement officers have seized some of the fraudster’s real estate and frozen his bank accounts.

Brazilian law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are involved in the search for Francisley Valdevino da Silva and the investigation. The bitcoin sheikh is known to be in the city of Curitiba, where he leads a huge team of crypto traders.

The main task of law enforcement is to prevent Silva from leaving Brazil, because then the search circle will expand significantly and the chances of catching the fraudster will be less. So far, neither Interpol, nor Europol, nor the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been able to detain one of the most wanted cryptocurrency fraudsters, Ruzha Ignatova.

Ruzha Ignatova founded the OneCoin pyramid scheme, which she and her offshore company, OneCoin Ltd, promoted under the guise of cryptocurrency. Ignatova promised investors to make OneCoin the most popular virtual currency in the world, encouraging users to transfer their own savings to OneCoin investment accounts. According to rough estimates, the fraudster received $ 4 billion.