Skip to main content
boxmining

Plus Token (PLUS) Scam – Anatomy of a Ponzi

Michael GuMichael Gu
July 4, 2019
13 min read
3 views
News
Plus Token (PLUS) Scam – Anatomy of a Ponzi
Contents

What is Plus Token?

“Plus Token” was a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme disguised as a high-yield investment program. Platform administrators closed down the operation in June 2019. Fraudsters abandoned the scheme by withdrawing over USD $3 billion in cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS) and leaving the message “sorry we have run.” This led to an international manhunt for the platform administrators and creators of Plus Token. Plus Token has also been blamed for Bitcoin’s 2019 price weakness, as stolen funds were sold via Bitcoin OTC desks.

Plus Token had a major following in Korea and China — especially among investors who were not familiar with cryptocurrencies. Plus Token was a high-yield investment program that offered massive rewards on “investment” to unsuspecting victims in China and Korea. The scheme offered 9% to 18% monthly returns on investment, with larger investments getting more rewards. The structure is similar to other high-yield investment programs like BitConnect, which collapsed in January 2018.

How did the Plus Token Ponzi scheme work?

Plus Token is a classic Ponzi scheme. It lured unsuspecting victims to invest with promises of high returns on small investments. Plus Token maintained an illusion of a sustainable business by pretending the funds were used to develop cryptocurrency-related products such as the Plus Token Wallet and Exchange. In reality, returns were generated by dividing more recent investments to pay off older members. The illusion of a sustainable business is what classifies this as a Ponzi scheme, since victims believed they were investing in a real business generating high returns.

Plus Token also had a strong referral element, which gave huge bonuses to any member who referred friends and family into the scheme. Investors were divided into four “tiers” according to how much they invested and how many other referrals they could bring in. The more a member referred, the exponentially higher the return. Members began referring friends and family to invest large sums of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, and Litecoin.

Plus Token relied heavily on conferences and meetups to promote the token. The following video is from a Plus Token gathering.

Payments stopped 30th June 2019

Early signs of trouble started surfacing in June 2019 as users began reporting delays in fund withdrawals. Some took to the Chinese social media site Weibo to complain that they were unable to receive funds despite waiting for 35 hours after submitting withdrawal requests (Source: BlockTempo).

Initially, Plus Token blamed “higher miner fees” for the withdrawal delays. They claimed they had sent transactions with 1 sat/byte, leading to long delays on the Bitcoin blockchain. Plus Token supporters avidly urged their followers to “believe” in the system and disregard the “false information.”

Ring leaders tried to convince the community that Plus Token would come back.

Scammers: “Sorry we have run”

As funds began moving, one of the transactions carried the note “Sorry, we have run” as a comment to the transaction. This needs no explanation — organisers of the scam had initiated their exit strategy and fled the country.

109 members of the Plus Token scam have been arrested

Reports from Chinese news outlet CLS on 30 July 2020 stated that 109 individuals had been arrested in connection with the Plus Token scheme by the Ministry of Public Security. These include all 27 primary suspects thought to be responsible for the scam and another 82 core members.

Is Plus Token still scamming users?

On 29 April 2020, screenshots of the Plus Token app circulated on Chinese social media showing a supposed notice announcing that version 3.0 beta of the app was now online. Subsequently, on 4 May 2020, a further notice was issued by the Plus Token team saying that version 3.0 beta would undergo compatibility synchronization and would stop all transaction functions. The notice added that once this version was live, some eligible users would receive a reward. However, it looked more like an effort by Plus Token’s ringleaders to placate those who had invested by giving them hope that the project might return.

Tip of the iceberg

Plus Token can be seen as the tip of the iceberg. There are many other very similar crypto Ponzi schemes and scams — Cloud Token, S Block, and other cloud “mining” tokens, for example. At the end of the day, tokens that “guarantee” high returns without a clear and auditable business plan should set off red flags.

Laundering stolen funds into exchanges

Luckily, research is being done to track wallets known to be associated with Plus Token (8btc.com, @doveywan, @PeckShield). Work done by @PeckShield has shown funds moving from large wallets (~5,000+ Bitcoin) to smaller wallets, and eventually into cryptocurrency exchanges. Due to the large sums of cryptocurrencies moved and actively being sold off, Plus Token played a role in dropping the price of Bitcoin.

Known amounts scammed — sum of BTC from identified and tracked addresses. Reports have circulated that up to ~1% of the entire Bitcoin supply is involved in the scam. More wallets are still being added to this list.

  • 70,000 BTC (USD $700,840,000)
  • 789,511 ETH (USD $142,111,980)
  • 26,299,109 EOS (USD $92,046,881)

Known Bitcoin wallet addresses (Source 1):

  • 1MFgcyJ7ZNSknbTBRaih6zWDE6V1A64tRY (1,865 BTC)
  • 3ETAVt2scYBFkBFksuNDk1i5tDLQ2c4zWR (4,922 BTC)
  • 3EYsru4LUcN258sENYPu5Py3S5WnqxEcnE (3,657 BTC)
  • 3HKs1g7u5a1uU4pC5HaNooYMbL1Lao4mv4 (3,928 BTC)
  • 3ESakThMrdVVrbhhcpf9spicyjCg1Uk8Jm (3,289 BTC)
  • 33LNws16Wfs12usWBNfa1MSX3YKY6Hdayf (3,270 BTC)
  • 3HwY536CxznDxMjiRCFkpx5ykwJbJMZY4w (1,725 BTC)
  • 35bCzX3RQEWdquqCPQkmdJdu2K4ut1roUZ (3,676.86 BTC)
  • 31owhyALzzPEqUFwRbU5yQR4wNhYEjCiE5 (749.66 BTC)
  • 3PBN3MCpDcZKr7WdyY1ULq1NeGwLNjpkj7 (12,000 BTC)
  • 14bwh6gmvol5ntwbvxqjkjdtzv4y5ebtvm (95,228 BTC)
  • 33FKcwFhFBKWHh46Ksmxs3QBu8HV7h8QdF (37,922 BTC)

Known EOS addresses of Plus Token:

  • eospstotoken
  • jnhgvbkkfdjf

Known Ethereum addresses of Plus Token:

  • 0xF4a2eFf88a408ff4c4550148151c33c93442619e
  • 0x997114ca0830e9bee7443368fa27f4af2d4e55a6
  • 0x0f953ef137ee0894cc06383ccb1ef77e76660b5a

Plus Token sell-offs responsible for Bitcoin’s price drop?

Since as early as August 2019, Chinese cryptocurrency trading groups had been circulating the view that, due to the sheer amount involved, the scammers trying to dispose of the ill-gotten Bitcoin were pushing prices downward. This price dump halted on 15 August 2019, coincidentally when Binance suspended trading for a system upgrade.

In late November 2019, the issue was again brought to the forefront when Twitter user Ergo reported having traced 187,000 BTC of the approximately 200,000 BTC attributed to Plus Token’s investors. Ergo found the funds had been “shuffled” (albeit badly, if at all) and gradually sent to various cryptocurrency exchanges and OTC brokers — primarily Huobi — for sale on the market.

Ergo’s findings on the Plus Token funds

Ergo predicted that, if all the “mixed” funds were sold from August to November 2019, it would average out to around 1,300 BTC sold per day. That would have an effect on Bitcoin’s price, which fell from USD $9,981.41 on 1 August 2019 to USD $7,182.89 on 4 December 2019.

Based on Ergo’s estimates of the amounts sold daily, the sell-off of the remaining ~58,000 BTC or so of Plus Token funds would continue for another 1.5 to 2 months.

In an apparent pattern, Plus Token scammers move their funds when BTC prices experience volatility. Such was the case on 11 February 2020, when Bitcoin was trading at around USD $9,800 — almost 12,000 BTC (worth around USD $118 million) from one of the addresses associated with the Plus Token funds was moved and split amongst various other wallets.

On 7 March 2020, Bitcoin was again trading at over USD $9,000. Plus Token funds were again being funnelled through mixing services. This time, Twitter user @ErgoBTC noticed that a total of 13,000 BTC (worth around USD $210 million) was involved. Analysts such as Kevin Svenson believed the scammers were “slamming the market with sell orders” every time Bitcoin prices went up so as to unload the funds.

According to @ErgoBTC, the movement of funds to exchanges took a bit of a break from mid-March to early May 2020. Movement to exchanges has since resumed, with around 300–500 BTC/day being moved to exchanges.

Last of PlusToken funds moved to exchanges

On 22 June 2020, Twitter user Whale Alert found over 26 million EOS (worth over USD $67 million) had been transferred from a wallet associated with Plus Token to an unknown wallet, prompting cryptocurrency traders to go on high alert for potential downward price movement for EOS.

Indeed, on 24 June 2020 we did see a marked dip in EOS prices, though it cannot be confirmed that this was due to a sale of the Plus Token funds.

Only a matter of a few days later on 24 June 2020, Whale Alert found another huge chunk of Plus Token funds — this time over 789,000 ETH (worth over USD $187 million) — had been transferred from a Plus Token wallet to a new address, and yet again to another unknown address.

These funds were then further split into multiple unknown addresses of varying amounts.

Twitter user @ErgoBTC, who has been following the movement of the Plus Token funds, observes that the ETH that was recently transferred is the remainder of Plus Token’s unmixed coins, which are now being moved to mixers. The purpose of this is to cloud the movement history of the Plus Token funds, so that they can avoid being flagged by exchanges when they are eventually sold on the market.

In addition to the movements of EOS and ETH, it has been a very busy week for Plus Token. So far they have moved over USD $428 million worth of cryptocurrencies to new addresses and the following exchanges: Binance, Huobi, HBTC, OKEx, Gate.io and MXC Exchange.

Are exchanges doing anything to deter scammers?

Those behind Plus Token rely on cryptocurrency exchanges to dispose of their scammed funds. Cryptocurrency exchanges do have Know Your Customer (KYC) measures in place which should identify and report any such activity since it clearly constitutes money laundering. However, previous massive sell-offs by Plus Token took place on Huobi and OKEx, demonstrating that their KYC and AML measures were ineffective in stopping them in that instance.

Since the previous sell-off, exchanges have stepped up their standards. For example, in reaction to the sell-off Huobi launched Star Atlas, an on-chain analytics tool to identify problematic activities such as fraud and money laundering on their exchange. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer exchange Paxful has partnered with Chainalysis so that the exchange’s transactions can be monitored in real time.

In the latest sell-off, it has already been found that substantial funds are being mixed and deposited into Binance, Huobi, HBTC, OKEx, Gate.io and MXC Exchange. Nothing has happened yet, but many traders are already watching to see if a market crash could be incoming, whilst questioning whether the affected exchanges will take any action on the funds that are now in their hands.

Chinese police seized USD $4.2b of Plus Token, forfeited to China’s treasury

Filings from the Yancheng Intermediate People’s Court reveal that authorities seized 194,775 Bitcoin (BTC), 833,083 Ether (ETH), 1.4 million Litecoin (LTC), 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 Dash, 487 million XRP, 6 billion Dogecoin (DOGE), 79,581 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and 213,724 Tether (USDT) from 7 individuals convicted in connection with this case.

This totals around USD $4.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies!

Court filings have also indicated that the seized cryptocurrencies will be forfeited to the National Treasury. This is because in China, trading and dealing in cryptocurrencies is illegal — so victims have no legal right to the return of the seized assets.

Some victims have joked that they have inadvertently contributed to the national treasury.

What is happening to Plus Token in 2022?

The Plus Token saga, which started all the way back in 2018, drew to a close in December 2020 when the court in Jiangsu province, China sentenced the ringleaders of the Plus Token scheme to up to 11 years imprisonment. The main ringleader, Chen Bo, and 13 other ringleaders were sentenced to between 2 and 11 years in jail. They were also fined various amounts ranging from 120,000 yuan to 6 million yuan. Another associate, Chen Tao, who was responsible for transferring the illegally obtained funds, was sentenced to over 4 years imprisonment.

As mentioned in the previous section, all the confiscated cryptocurrencies obtained from the Plus Token fraudsters were turned over to the state.

The Plus Token scam is, however, not dead in 2022. From various social media outlets we can see people making periodic videos saying that the Plus Token project is alive and that they are working with a top Asian cryptocurrency exchange. Furthermore, these “influencers” — who apparently have connections with those involved with Plus Token — allege that once Plus Token is launched, they will not have a native token, but instead the Plus Token proceeds will be issued in the form of that exchange’s own token.

Note, however, that the “major Asian exchange” in question has never mentioned any working relationship with Plus Token, nor has there been any announcement that they will issue their own native token.

Plus Token sources and references

Chinese sources and news coverage

Special thanks to Matthew Graham for providing the videos and research!

Crypto wallet addresses

Plus Token sell-offs and Bitcoin price correlation?

Findings from Twitter user Ergo: https://twitter.com/ErgoBTC/status/1197496064854634496

Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

Share

Found this useful?

Share it with someone who'd want to read it.

X (Twitter)FacebookLinkedIn

Michael Gu

Michael Gu

Michael Gu, Creator of Boxmining, stared in the Blockchain space as a Bitcoin miner in 2012. Something he immediately noticed was that accurate information is hard to come by in this space. He started Boxmining in 2017 mainly as a passion project, to educate people on digital assets and share his experiences. Being based in Asia, Michael also found a huge discrepancy between digital asset trends and knowledge gap in the West and China.

Related

Top Crypto News (13 Sep 2025)
News

Top Crypto News – September 13, 2025

TL;DR Bitcoin surged to $116,778 (+2% daily, +25% YTD) while Ethereum hit $4,675 (+5.8%) as the SEC unveiled “Project Crypto” regulatory framework. Solana overtook BNB as the #5 crypto by market cap at $240, and Tether announced USAT stablecoin launch plans. The market cap exceeded $4 trillion with overwhelmingly positive sentiment across social media. Market Overview Price Action & Performance Asset Price 24h Change YTD Performance Key Level Bitcoin $116,778 […]

ronalthapa

Get the next post in your inbox

Weekly crypto briefings — no fluff, no paid placements.