Billion-dollar illegal cryptocurrency ring busted in Hanoi

Than Van Thoai, 40, vice director of the Global BBA company, along with seven others, was put under an investigation by the Hanoi police on Thursday for multi-level marketing offences.

Previously in May, Thoai and Ho Quoc Anh, chairman of the management board of the BBI Vietnam Internet Technology company, were also put under an investigation for appropriation of property using a computer network, telecommunications network, or electronic device.

In 2019, Thoai bought out the CashBack Pro (CBP) foreign cryptocurrency project as a business venture. Through his connections with foreigners, he created virtual transactions and advertised the CBP cryptocurrency on certain websites, as well as developing applications where users can gain bonuses as CBP coins.

Thoai also created websites to call for investments, and developed systems to convert bonuses into cryptocurrency. He created the CBP Wallet to provide CBP coins under multi-marketing schemes.

He then advertised the project, saying participants could get bonuses directly and be rewarded if they could connect with the community or open their own investment accounts in the network.

Authorities said Thoai established the Global BBA company to organize training and advertising events.

However, the company did not have business licenses for multi-marketing business, yet he still organized conferences at the company’s headquarters in Hanoi’s Thanh Xuan District on financial management and other topics.

Several policies were introduced by Thoai’s group to attract investors, such as paying 0.5% in interest per day and other bonuses.

Investors would be provided packages with different values, as low as $1,000 and as high as $100,000, and packages with higher values would have better bonuses.

Each person looking to participate would either be introduced to two others, or had to open two accounts themselves.

From March 2021 to June 2024, Thoai’s group was accused of creating investment communities with hundreds of thousands of accounts, with the values of packages amounting to tens of billions of U.S. dollars.