A court in Kazakhstan's Karaganda Region has sentenced the organizer of a CVK financial pyramid scheme to two years of restricted freedom and ordered the confiscation of assets, infohub.kz reports.
According to the official Telegram channel of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM), participants were asked to deposit USDT cryptocurrency to purchase virtual stores priced between $120 and $49,000. In return, they were promised daily income and additional bonuses for recruiting new investors.
"The goods listed in the virtual stores did not actually exist, and income depended on attracting new participants and their deposits. Investors' funds were transferred in USDT cryptocurrency via the OKX platform to electronic wallets," the agency said.
According to the AFM, operational measures froze crypto assets worth 474,000 USDT, equivalent to 212 million tenge. Under the court ruling, these digital assets were confiscated to the state. The sentence has entered into force.
Earlier, the AFM announced it had shut down the alleged CVK financial pyramid and was conducting investigations in 14 regions of Kazakhstan.