The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it is sending PayPal payments totaling more than $470,000 to people who lost money to two pyramid schemes involving cryptocurrencies.
- According to the FTC, the defendants promoted Bitcoin Funding Team and My7Network, which falsely promised that participants could earn large sums of money by paying cryptocurrency such as bitcoin (BTC) or litecoin (LTC) to sign up.
- However, Bitcoin Funding Team and My7Network were pyramid schemes that depended on the recruitment of new people to make money. Most of the participants in the schemes failed to recoup their initial investments, the FTC said.
- As part of the settlement, the FTC will send 7,964 refunds through PayPal beginning on Nov. 5. The average refund is about $59.
- The more than $470,000 in payments follows agreements by the scheme's principals who agreed in 2019 to pay more than $500,000 in total under terms of the settlement.