$50M OTC Scam No One Is Talking About

OTC (over-the-counter) markets are mostly closed off to regular users. It hides a huge part of how real crypto deals are done behind closed doors.​

Well, a massive $50 million scam just happened in one of these private OTC circles. And nobody’s talking about it.


Here’s the full breakdown — learn from it before you get burned.

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1.​

(October 2024 – January 2025)


It started like any “legit” OTC desk. Big-name VCs and KOLs bought allocations in hyped tokens like APT, SEI, SWELL — 50% discount, 5-month vesting.


To build trust, the first deals went smoothly. Tokens were delivered. No one suspected what was coming next.

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2.​

(February – June 2025)


More volume. More buyers. Same deal format: 50% off, 5-month vesting.


The OTC desk became well-known in private circles. People thought they found a real alpha source.

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3.​

(May 2025)


The Co-Founder of Mysten Labs publicly stated that no legit OTC deals for $SUI were happening on Telegram.


Still, buyers ignored it. Deals kept flowing. Volume spiked.

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4.​

On June 1st, a deal involving $FLUID was made.


That’s when everything stopped. No more token deliveries. Just excuses:

"KYC delays,"
"Team traveling,"
"Tech issues" — the usual.

Click to expand...

Then on June 19th, Aza Ventures — a participant — confirmed: it was a scam.


The first deals were paid using scammer funds. Later ones followed a Ponzi structure, using new buyers to cover earlier promises — all disguised as legit OTC deals with real tokens.

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What’s Happening Now?​

• Total damage: ~$50,000,000
• Victims: KOLs, VCs, whales — some used borrowed money
• Aza Ventures is in contact with one scammer, trying to negotiate returns
• Scam wallets haven’t been traced yet
• Possible partial refund may happen by end of June
  

P/S :
Detailed investigation -

Wow that's crazy. So basically these big shots thought they were getting insider deals on crypto and ended up getting totally ripped off. I guess just because you're a VC or some "KOL" doesn't mean you can't get scammed. Fifty million dollars though? That's insane! It's kinda wild how they ignored the warning about SUI deals too. Seems like greed really blinded them. Hope they catch those scammers and those affected get some of their money back but man it's a tough lesson learned. Stick to normal exchanges I guess.

Yes, actually I didn't hear about it, thanks for sharing. OTC transactions are moving much more money than traditional exchanges dealing with retailers, the damage is also much bigger

Bro every day there are transactions for large sums of money, 50 million is a lot of money, but there are even bigger turnovers. Just like 3 days ago the Iranian stock exchange was hacked, you better write about it and there's a bigger amount than that. human greed

Greed will ruin you, remember that + social engineering played that in recent times shows the fall very well who knows how to do it

I don't know bro my opinion so you're not surprised I can write and talk about it for a long time but think what kind of transactions are going on from DarkNet.