The FBI’s 'NexFundAI' coin was used to catch alleged market manipulators, but the crypto community may have confused it with another coin.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation used a fake AI fund crypto to catch alleged fraudsters engaged in market manipulation.
According to an Oct. 7 indictment in Massachusetts Federal District Court, the coin, which the agency called “NexFundAI (NEXF),” was presented as a crypto security that claimed to represent shares in an artificial intelligence-related fund.
Per the indictment, the FBI told scammers that it wanted help to manipulate the token’s trading volume. This would fool investors into believing that the coin was more popular than it actually was.
The scammers offered to help with the fraud, and the agency used the evidence collected during this process to get an indictment against them. This is the first time the FBI has admitted to creating a cryptocurrency as part of its investigations and the first time it has charged a crypto market maker with price manipulation.
