The founders of the cryptocurrency trading platform My Crypto Trade (MCT +) completed an exit scam by stealing user funds from the platform. The total damage, according to minimal estimates, amounted to 100 thousand euros in cryptocurrency. This edition of BlockchainJournal said one of the investors of the platform under the nickname tax79.
Being the moderator of MCT + Discord chat for over a year and possessing almost complete information about the platform and its development process, tax79 conducted its own investigation and established the identities of the founders of the project.
“Instead of marginal“ hackers ”from third world countries, they turned out to be quite successful members of society from one quiet, prosperous country of Western Europe, ” said the user.
Start
The MCT + cryptocurrency exchange platform was founded on May 28, 2018. The number of coins traded on it was about 130. As of January 2019, more than 5,000 users were registered on it.
Key features of the platform were:
- direct exchange of one cryptocurrency for another or for several others;
- the ability to place a trade order for a part of the amount;
- creation of private transactions available only to persons who have received a special link;
- lack of commission for depositing and withdrawing funds from the platform (there is only a network commission for withdrawing funds);
- lack of trading bots and gross trading volumes;
- anonymity;
- high level of security, including two-factor authorization.
Here is one of the MCT + promos:
Other features of the platform can be found in white paper .
According to tax79, the platform was fully operational, no major software failures were observed. The project over the course of the year was quite evolutionarily developed, new functionality was gradually introduced.
“Since March 2019, part of the income from the platform’s activities began to be distributed among holders of the MCTP platform’s native token. In this case, the MCTP coin began to fulfill a peculiar function of shares, ” he added.
Theft of user assets
On May 14, 2019, the users ’balances unexpectedly disappeared on the platform – all bitcoins and several other well-traded coins completely disappeared.
The official version of the incident was as follows: the main developer, he is one of the founders of the project, allegedly left his laptop unattended in the coworking office for several hours. At the same time, sessions were opened on the laptop to the entire infrastructure of the platform. According to him, one of the coworkers in the office took advantage of the situation and pulled coins from the platform.
Below are the announcements of the founders of the platform in Discord chat with a description of the incident:
At the end of May 2019, the main developer / founder announced that one of his family members fell ill and that he could no longer pay attention to the development of the platform.
At the end of June 2019, the founders announced that the platform is closing in 14 days and further development, possibly, will continue only after a year.
Exit scam investigation
“On July 2, 2019, I published my investigation, in which I indicated that the official version of what happened on May 14, to put it mildly, is not true and on blockchain transactions I proved that the main developer / founder simply stole funds from the platform,” tax79 said.
According to him, on May 14 at 13:00 (UTC), the platform’s MCTP wallet began the stacking process, which lasted about 40 minutes. During stacking, user balances began to randomly change. So, the personal balance of tax79 changed twice – from 20 thousand to 89 thousand, and then from 89 thousand to 169 thousand.
At about 2:30 p.m. (UTC), the user MCTP balances disappeared from the platform. At 18:24 (UTC), 500 thousand MCTP coins were transferred from the platform to one external address.
At 13:15 (UTC), transactions began, they started from the platform’s bitcoin wallet (in 3 minutes, four transactions were completed for a total of 2.85 BTC).
At about 2:45 p.m. (UTC), the remnants of the user's bitcoin balances disappeared from the platform.
At 15:00 (UTC), the platform became unavailable, and on May 16 returned online with zeroed BTC, WOLF and XRD wallets. MCTP wallet has been completely disabled.
According to the tax79 investigation , the withdrawal of funds was made to a wallet owned by the founder of the platform.
A few hours after the publication of the investigation, the MCT + website – https://trade.mct.plus/ – became unavailable, all platform accounts on social networks were deleted, and the founders of the platform disappeared in an unknown direction.
Founder Disclosure
As tax79 was established, the founders of MCT + turned out to be a married couple from the Austrian city of Innsbruck – Andreas Kaltenhuber and Karina Fontan.
They are currently the founders of the PushPanda.io small software development office.
Andreas Kaltenhuber himself is a programmer with over 20 years of experience. Previously organized several IT companies. He is a member of the local rich club Seriously sexiest communication & SportsClub (SSCSC), which organize golf tournaments several times a year for allegedly charitable activities. One of his friends and members of this club is the multimillionaire, director and co-owner of the retail retail chain MPREIS (turnover of 900 million euros for 2018) Peter Paul Melk.
All club events are regularly reflected in the local press, where you can often see photographs of Kaltenhuber.
TIROLERIN , July 2019, pages 134-135
Andreas's parents are also public figures. His father, Heinrich Kaltenhuber, previously served as the director of a school and was also head of the Austrian branch of the international charity Lions. Mother Waltraud Kaltenhuber was formerly the headmaster of the general education school and is now involved in political activities in the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).
Andreas, Waltraud, Heindrich Kaltenhuber (bottom row in the center, from left to right)
“In other words, the Kaltenhuber family is part of the so-called elite of Austrian society. In any case, their level is much higher than a simple Austrian inhabitant, ”says tax79.
Spouse Andreas Karina Fountain is six years older than him, for her this is the third marriage. Her previous husbands were also quite wealthy people. The first husband, from whom she had two daughters, the owner of a bus rental company and organization of tourist bus tours. The second husband is the owner of a major media publication.
“Judging by the jewelry and watches that she wears, more than 20 thousand euros are hanging on her only hand, ” the user indicates. “ So among the scammers and thieves who decided to join the crypto industry on a wave of hype, you can find completely different characters, even those who you can’t expect to see there, much less suspect of theft.”
Facebook helped establish the real identities of the anonymous founders of the project, hiding under the unremarkable nicknames Andrew [MCT +] and Mari [MCT +].
“When creating the project page on Facebook, they were on a business trip in Vienna, and Karina Fountain, apparently using the Wi-Fi service in the hotel, forgot to turn on the VPN. As a result, their actual location was displayed on the project’s Facebook page, ”says tax79.
Further, when analyzing the Related Pages section for likes and other information from some Andreas (the German version of the name Andrew), tax79 found likes on a page in a restaurant in Innsbruck from a certain Andreas Kaltenhuber. The following was the page of the software company PushPanda from the city of Innsbruck, where a certain Andreas Kaltenhuber was the founder.
“By comparing the information from the social accounts of the found Andreas Kaltenhuber with the information and dates from the Discord chat of the MCT + project, it was found with 100% accuracy that the found Andreas Kaltenhuber and Andrew [MCT +] are the same person, ” the user notes.
Even such an innocent detail as the publication in the MCT + chat of photos of their dogs sitting on a seat on a golf cart, later determined that the photograph was taken in Golfclub Innsbruck-Igls.
Andreas Kaltenhuber has been a member of this club for many years.
“Summing up the activities of fraudsters, we can state the following. Several thousand people lost their funds on the platform during the theft and exit scam. Several thousand people holding MCTP coins lost all of their investment in the project. At the same time, some investors lost significant amounts – several tens of thousands of euros each. The total damage from fraudulent activity can be estimated at many hundreds of thousands of euros, ”sums up tax79.
The editors of BlockchainJournal tried to get comments from Andreas Kaltenhuber and Karina Fontan via Facebook, but at the time of publication of the material did not receive a response.
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