Alleged Cryptocurrency Fraud –Virgil Sigma and VQR.
Stefan Hi Quin a 24-year-old Australian National thought he was too clever to juggle fraudulent activities between two companies, but looks like things did not turn out to be in his favor. He was charged with securities fraud and he pleaded guilty of this alleged cryptocurrency fraud scheme. Qin was accused for spending all the assets of his 90-billion-dollar company, which rightfully belonged to his investors and later tried to steal the investment money from his other firm VQR, to pay back to the investors of the first company.
Stefan is the owner and founder of two multimillion-dollar hedge funds, named Virgil Sigma founded in August 2016 and VQR founded in February 2020. Both these companies are currently located in New York, New York.
Qin, all while running the two lavish crypto firms portrayed that his firm had great potentials in terms of crypto and portrayed such an image which made investors easily fall into his trap and invest millions of dollars. All these investors who fell into his tactics are now facing a fraud of about 100 billion dollars.
It turns out that the money which Qin was making his clients invest for crypto was not being used for the purposes that he made them believe. He was rather spending a huge chunk of that money in financing his own lavish life like food, travel and renting an apartment in one of the poshest areas of New York. He was also spending a big part of the investment money to make personal, often illiquid, investments in other companies that had nothing to do with virtual currencies.
He started the cryptocurrency fraud with his investors in 2017, exactly a year after the company was made. The investors obviously did care about their millions of dollars but Qin had planned it all well so every month Qin presented them with a statement sheet. This contained the records of the values of their holdings within the company, along with tear sheets of how the company was making remarkable profits. In addition, he provided them with annual balance sheets as well. All this kept the investors and bay and gave them a sense of security that their money was in safe hands and also attracted new investors.
However, Qin’s success was short lived because in December 2020 when a couple of his investors decided to withdraw their investments from his firm for their own reasons, Qin got stuck considering how he did not have the money to pay them back. He though very slyly convinced them that rather than withdrawing their money from Virgil Sigma, he can just transfer it to the other company VQR. Though agreed, investors waited months for him to show the approval transfer request. He kept them convinced about the transfer by showing a wire transfer request, claiming the payments were stuck while in reality the amount was never present.
He then threatened the Head Trader at VQR to bring down all trading positions at the company and transfer the funds to QIN so that he can pay back to the investors at Virgil Sigma. The Head Trader though warned him about the outcomes, did transfer the money for him to meet the redemption requests.
Qin’s plan however failed and a case was filed against him in December 2020, a court hearing was planned to take place on May 20, 2021.
The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
ISOG can help potential investors with verifying the legitimacy of cryptocurrency platforms and wallets. Where the investor has been defrauded, ISOG private investigators and forensic experts are expert in cryptocurrency fraud investigation and can trace the flow of the crypto up to the cryptocurrency exchanges used to convert crypto coins into currency.