Lawmaker presses for rapid freeze in Fun Coffee scam
Thestandard · 1 SOURCESabout 2 hours ago2 MIN
Summary
Johnny Ng Kit-chong called for immediate asset-freezing action after investigators traced 12.28 million Tether, or USDT, worth about HK$95.78 million, in funds linked to the Fun Coffee cryptocurrency investment scam. Victims have submitted the findings to police, hoping the tracing work will help authorities recover assets from a case whose linked blockchain transactions were estimated at 221 million USDT, or about HK$1.73 billion
Key Points
- The tracing report was prepared by a third-party organization commissioned by the Hong Kong Anti-Fraud Alliance and later handed to police by victims
- Investigators started with 18,725 USDT allegedly lost by one victim on the TRON blockchain and reconstructed a six-layer transfer network
- A token-sweeping address received 130 transactions totaling about 654,000 USDT before funds moved to a core distribution wallet holding around 14.11 million USDT
- Investigators said about 70 percent of those funds passed through a hot wallet identified as Bitpie, apparently to complicate tracing efforts
- The report identified 29 exchange deposit addresses across 808 transactions, with Binance receiving the largest share and one HTX address holding about 250,000 USDT flagged as sanctioned
Why It Matters
If police act quickly on the traced wallets and exchange deposit addresses, investigators may be able to seek account-holder records and preserve part of the identified funds before they are moved again. The case also shows how local victims are relying on blockchain forensics to support recovery efforts in large-scale cryptocurrency fraud investigations in Hong Kong