Another exit scam? The management of the Bitsane cryptocurrency exchange has disappeared with customer funds

Ireland-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane ceased operations, and its management stole deposits of almost 250 thousand users, reports The Forbes .

As the newspaper notes, Bitsane LP in the past was listed as one of the trading platforms approved by Ripple. In addition, in January 2018, CNBC published an article about Bitsane, which, among other things, said that the exchange is a good option for traders who want to trade XRP before the token is placed on other large sites like Coinbase.

It is reported that problems with the withdrawal of funds Bitsane users began to experience in May of this year. The exchange itself cited technical problems as reasons. By June 17, the website of the exchange and its accounts in social networks were deleted, and the letters that users sent were returned, because the recipient was not found.

Also, the publication tried to contact Bitsane CEO Aidas Rupsis and technical director of the exchange Dmitry Prudnikov, but without success. The Prudnikov profile on LinkedIn also turned out to be deleted.

As of May 30, 2019, Bitsane's client base totaled 246 thousand people, the daily trading volumes of the exchange, according to CoinMarketCap data from March 31, exceeded $ 7 million.

In the groups that Bitsane users created in Telegram and Facebook , it is said that on average, traders lost up to $ 5000. Also, Forbes quotes a person who did not wish to give his username from the United States, who, until the exchange disappeared, kept on it $ 150,000 in XRP and bitcoins.

In addition, the publication mentions the British firm Bitsane Limited, which was registered in August 2017 in the name of Maxim Zmitrovich and allegedly tried to acquire intellectual rights to the Bitsane code and use it for its own platform called Azbit.

Earlier this month, Zmitrovich himself categorically rejected any significant link between Azbit and Bitsane, noting that representatives of the Irish stock exchange had not responded to his letters since April last year.

Additionally, it is reported that many American Bitsane users have already filed complaints with the FBI, but it is not clear how they will be able to recover the lost funds.

As BlockchainJournal wrote earlier, the launch of Bitsane took place in November 2016 .

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