Chinese cryptocurrency project faked its founding team, per report

BHB, a Chinese cryptocurrency project, has been using false information regarding its founding team to promote the business, CoinDesk reports. The company managed to raise at least $20 million through a referral scheme, even though a Chinese news outlet accused it of running an illegal pyramid scheme earlier this year. Some BHB users believed the new client funds were used to finance existing clients' rewards.

According to CoinDesk, at least two founding members might not even exist as the images on the website show university professors not connected to the project. The man presented as financial engineer Bobby White is, in fact, Tsinghua University professor Alexander White. The product designer Gregory Moss, on the other hand, is a Chinese University of Hong Kong philosophy professor. Both denied they’d had any association with the BHB project and claimed they had been unaware of its existence.

CoinDesk has linked the company to Renbing Li, founder of MoCapital. Li claimed BHB aimed to liberalize communities, denying the allegations the company is a pyramid scheme.

The company also provided invalid contact information—a disconnected phone number and an incorrect address of its N.Y.-based headquarters. At the time of writing, the BHB website is down.