Investors in a “porn cryptocurrency” called Fantasy Market claim the project’s CEO has run away with their money and has not refunded all their investment despite repeated requests, the New York Post reports.
Fantasy Market was supposed to be a live webcam site where “cam-girls” would be paid in FMtokens (FMT) to perform adult entertainment.
Built on the Ethereum Network, the platform would allow viewers to decide exactly what they wanted the performer to do or say during the show by giving them the ability to specify actions and pay accordingly.
Jonathan Lucas, the creator of the so-called “porn cryptocurrency” FMT, was aiming to raise as much as $25 million last year to fund the project, according to the white paper.
Lucas kicked off an initial coin offering (ICO), putting FMT on sale at a price of $0.20 per token. Investments were accepted in either bitcoin or ether.
While it is still unclear how close Lucas got to his $25 million fundraising goal, he reportedly raised roughly $4.5 million.
The venture crashed and burned in November, when the media started questioning Lucas on the ICO and several claims he had made in the white paper.
“Jonathan Lucas (most likely an alias) has scammed us and run off with the cryptocurrency,” one investor told The Post, more than two months after investing in Fantasy Market.
Judging by a recent post on the Fantasy Market website, the company appears to be trying to get money back to investors.
However, those who got refunds are frustrated that their ether or bitcoin investments were returned at the USD rate in which they were received, as BTC and ETH have significantly edged up since.
“I wrote threatening to file police and FBI reports. Within hours they refunded me ethereum with a dollar amount equal to what I had contributed in early September, but the coin has more than tripled in value since then, they kept the rest of my contribution, essentially stealing quite a lot of money from me,” an investor said.
Other investors told The Post that Lucas appears to be actively trading on cryptocurrency exchanges.
CEO of “porn cryptocurrency” vanishes with investor money – Image source: FM