- Crypto platform Debiex ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution and penalties for operating a “pig butchering” romance scam.
- Arizona federal court ruled against Debiex after it failed to respond to CFTC lawsuit alleging it defrauded five victims of approximately $2.3 million.
- Alleged money mule Zhāng Chéng Yáng had nearly 63 ETH (worth ~$119,500) and $5.70 in USDT seized from an OKX wallet for redistribution to a victim.
A federal judge has ordered cryptocurrency platform Debiex to pay approximately $2.5 million in restitution and penalties for operating a romance scam that defrauded multiple victims. The ruling comes after the platform failed to respond to charges brought by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which accused the company of running a sophisticated “pig butchering” scheme targeting unsuspecting investors.
On March 13, Arizona Federal Court Judge Douglas Rayes granted the CFTC’s motion for summary judgment, ordering Debiex to return approximately $2.26 million stolen from customers and pay an additional civil penalty of nearly $221,500. In his ruling, Judge Rayes stated there was no evidence that Debiex’s failure to respond to the legal proceedings resulted from “excusable neglect.”
The CFTC filed the lawsuit in January 2024, alleging that Debiex operators conducted what’s known as a “pig butchering” scam—a scheme where perpetrators cultivate romantic relationships with targets on social media to build trust before convincing them to invest in fraudulent platforms. According to the CFTC, five victims were collectively defrauded of approximately $2.3 million through the scheme.
In a separate but related ruling on March 12, Judge Rayes granted the CFTC’s motion for default judgment against Zhāng Chéng Yáng, who was allegedly serving as a “money mule” for Debiex. The court found that Zhāng controlled a cryptocurrency wallet on the OKX exchange containing assets “to which he had no legitimate claim.” The judge ordered the contents of Zhāng’s account—approximately 63 Ethereum (ETH) worth around $119,500 and $5.70 in Tether (USDT)—to be transferred to an unnamed victim of the scheme.
The CFTC’s complaint detailed how Debiex marketed itself as a “Blockchain Network Decentralized perpetual contract trading platform” offering futures trading and “Mining transactions.” The scheme’s operators, whose identities remain unknown, reportedly posed as successful female crypto traders on social media, establishing relationships with victims through “continuous and repeated messaging and sharing purported pictures of themselves.”
After convincing victims to create accounts and deposit cryptocurrency, Debiex would provide “fictitious information” about account balances, trading positions, and profits. “All of this information was most likely false,” the CFTC stated in its filing. “The evidence shows that the Customers’ digital assets were simply sent to numerous digital asset wallets in an attempt to obfuscate their destination.”
The case highlights the growing concern over romance-based cryptocurrency scams, which combine social engineering tactics with the technical complexity of digital assets to target vulnerable investors.
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