Self Chain Founder Denies $50 Million Fraud
Date: 2025-06-23 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: BUSINESS
The founder of the Self Chain crypto project, Ravindra Kumar, said that the accusations against him are unfounded and assured that he is working with his legal team to clarify the situation. According to him, the allegations of his involvement in the fraud are false.
An investigation conducted by the authors of the Altcoin Alpha account revealed that since November 2024, offers for over-the-counter sales of tokens of large projects such as Aptos, Sei, Swell, Coti, and Kava began to appear in several Telegram groups at large discounts of up to 50% of the market value. The deals involved long periods of token lockup - from four to five months.
The first deals did seem fair — investors received tokens at favorable terms, which led to increased trust in the scheme. In February 2025, the offer expanded to include SUI, NEAR, GRASS, Axelar, and other coins. Many investors reinvested, with the average investment exceeding $1 million.
However, by May, several projects warned the community about the scam associated with such OTC deals. Thus, SUI team representative Eman Abio appealed to investors to avoid falling for the tricks of scammers offering such OTC deals.
After June 1, tokens stopped being delivered to new owners. Investors were faced with unclear explanations for delays, including statements like “source in transit,” “exchange issues,” and “KYC delays on the part of the project.”
On June 19, Mohammed Waseem, CEO of the Indian OTC platform Aza Ventures, admitted that his company had unwittingly facilitated dozens of fraudulent transactions. According to him, the tokens for sale were supplied by a broker, whom he provisionally called Source 1. Initially, the transactions went smoothly, but then the scheme turned into a classic Ponzi scheme, which was confirmed by law enforcement agencies after Waseem's appeal.
He noted that he knows the identity of Source 1, but has not yet disclosed it publicly, hoping to return the money by the end of the month. Waseem himself said that he spent all his personal savings on compensation for the victims and cannot cover all the losses.
The founder of Berachain, known by the nickname Smokey The Bera, said that he contacted Waseem about suspicious over-the-counter token transactions, but he insisted on the reliability of his sources and refused to cooperate. Smokey The Bera expressed regret to the victims and reminded that if the offer seems too good to be true, most likely, it is a scam.
In the comments to Kumar's statement, users suggested that he was the one hiding behind the pseudonym Source 1, linking him to the "Indian founder of a project listed on Binance." Wasim later clarified that he had known Source 1 for over ten years.
