Police arrest dozens behind Egypt-based cloud mining scam HoggPool that stole millions from users

CAIRO – 4 March 2023: The Egyptian police arrested a criminal network led by foreign elements who stole LE 19 million through the cloud mining scam HoggPool, the Ministry of Interior announce on Saturday.

Police said it arrested 29 people who constitute this criminal network, including 13 foreigners, adding that they used two villas in Cairo as their headquarters to practice their illegal activities.

The HoggPool platform, launched in August 2022, withdrew millions of pounds from hundreds of users in exchange for a daily profit. The platform said it invests in cryptocurrency mining activities.

The platform offered users the possibility to rent so-called “mining machines” starting from LE 200 in order to get a daily profit of around 10 percent.

 

In order to encourage users to pay more money, HoggPool provided facilitations on paying, including the possibility to pay in Egyptian pounds rather than dollars and at a lower price than that of the official exchange rate.

HoggPool defined itself as an international platform with headquarters abroad and its app on Google Play was downloaded more than 100K times.

Late in February, the platform broke the hearts of hundreds of people after stopping paying them their daily profits, with some users claiming that they paid tens of thousands of Egyptian pounds to HoggPool.

Cryptocurrency activities are not legal in Egypt and authorities have frequently warned of fraudulent platforms that used to steal millions of pounds from citizens under the pretext of “easy investment” and “easy profits”.

The incident brings back to memory the ponzi-scheme White Sands, which reportedly stole “billions of pounds” from Egyptians last year before it vanished.

Legal measures taken

According to the Ministry of Interior, the arrested elements admitted that they formed the criminal network with the aim of targeting those who are willing to achieve quick profits via internet.

The elements also confessed stealing the money of the users and sending them to 9,965 electronic wallets in order to transfer the money abroad and buy bitcoins.

“The necessary measures are being taken to seize the monitored electronic wallets and track the funds transferred abroad through the Interpol,” the ministry said.

They also admitted that they closed the application after they were able to seize that money and that they were preparing to launch another app under the name (#RIOT) for the same purpose.

Legal measures were taken and the office of the Public Prosecution took over the investigation, the ministry added.

The ministry called on citizens not to follow these anonymous apps on the Internet in order not to be victims to fraud by international gangs.