PANews reported on January 17 that according to the Suqian Court’s official account, the court disclosed a pyramid scheme in the name of investing in virtual currency financial management projects. The suspect created the “ACORNS” online platform and issued virtual currencies such as “ACO” without any actual business projects. He advertised that the virtual currency could be used to participate in financial management to obtain high returns as bait, and required members to pay 100 USDT coins for financial management as a threshold to obtain static income. As of the time of the incident, the platform had more than 3,000 effective recharge members, and had accumulated nearly 3.16 million USDT in funds.

After trial, the Sucheng Court sentenced the defendants in this case to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from five years and three months to three years for the crime of organizing and leading pyramid selling activities, and imposed fines ranging from 170,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan.