SEC Files Charges Against NanoBit and CoinW6 in First Pig Butchering Related Action

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced its first-ever enforcement actions targeting "pig butchering" scams—fraudulent schemes where scammers build personal relationships with victims through social media platforms to gain their trust, before defrauding them via fake cryptocurrency trading platforms. The SEC filed charges against five entities and three individuals involved in two scams connected to the platforms NanoBit and CoinW6. Together, these scams defrauded investors out of nearly $3.2 million. The complaints in both cases are in-depth descriptions of scammers luring victims, through romantic overtures, to send cryptocurrency. 

In the case of NanoBit, scammers impersonated financial professionals in WhatsApp groups between October 2023 and June 2024, luring victims into investing in what was presented as a legitimate crypto asset trading platform. They falsely claimed that their affiliate, NanobitUS Securities, was an SEC-registered broker, giving the operation an air of legitimacy. Instead, the NanoBit platform was completely fraudulent, with funds being misappropriated and wired to bank accounts in Hong Kong. The defendants, including NanoBit Limited, are accused of violating antifraud provisions under federal securities laws.

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The SEC complaint shows, as visualized in the TRM graph below, that the NanoBit funds were transferred to a "transmitter" or aggregation address, which contained crypto likely obtained through other fraudulent activities. These fraudulent activities extended beyond NanoBit, implicating a web of fraudulent transactions that spanned multiple crypto addresses.

According to the SEC complaint, and visualized in TRM graph visualizer below, the NanoBit Receiver Address and NanoBit Deployer Address received hundreds of thousands of dollars of victims’ funds; which were then moved to the “Transmitter Address” “with crypto assets likely obtained through other fraudulent activities.” As of September 2024, the “transmitter” address has received about USD 9 million worth of cryptocurrency likely from multiple fraud schemes.

Similarly, CoinW6 ran a relationship-driven scam, where perpetrators posed as young professionals on LinkedIn and Instagram. Between July 2022 and December 2023, they built romantic relationships with victims through WhatsApp. 

After establishing trust, they convinced investors to open accounts on a fake CoinW6 trading platform, promising daily returns of up to 3% from crypto asset products such as staking, mining, and yield farming. In reality, these investments were entirely fictitious, with victim funds being siphoned off by the scammers. When victims attempted to withdraw funds, they were met with demands for additional payments or faced blackmail threats regarding compromising romantic communications.

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These cases, which underscore the risks of relationship-based investment frauds, signal a growing threat to retail investors in the crypto space. According to TRM Labs, scams and fraud accounted for about one-third of all crypto-related crime in the previous year, totaling $12.5 billion in losses.

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