By CCN: Coinroom, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Poland, has suddenly closed down its services in April as part of an exit scam that had left thousands of customers as victims.
According to the Polish media outlet Money.pl, Coinroom customers received an email on April 2 stating that the cryptocurrency exchange is terminating their contracts and they have one day to withdraw their funds. Failing to do so within that time would force users to request withdrawals by sending an email directly to the Coinroom support team.
Coinroom had the right to deal with withdrawals this way as the process was described in the user agreement customers had accepted when they created an account at the crypto exchange.
Coinroom suddenly vanishes
The cryptocurrency exchange failed to return the deposits of numerous customers while others had received only a part of the funds they were storing in their Coinroom wallets.
Later on, Coinroom stopped responding to withdrawal requests and closed down its website, which completely disappeared from the public domain. Simultaneously, the cryptocurrency exchange deleted all of its social media handles. Coinroom’s phone number stopped working as well.
Even though he promised a resolution for the stuck deposits by April 19, customers were unable to get in contact or find any contact information for Tomasz Zbigniew Wiewior, the director of the company. According to a victim, Wiewior formed another company in Estonia, but it is unclear whether the director had left Poland to move to the Baltic country as well.
Coinroom’s website simply redirects to an admin page. | Source: Shutterstock
While the exact losses of the victims remain unclear, the deposits of the testifying customers ranged between PLN 300 ($79) and PLN 60,000 ($15,660), the Polish media outlet reported.
One user stated that Coinroom failed to refund his 2.005 BTC deposit even after the customer received a withdrawal confirmation from the exchange on April 3.
Infuriated customers take steps against the exchange
Money.pl estimates the number of Coinroom exit scam victims at “several thousand” with many of them swarming cryptocurrency forums to share their grievances.
A victim took matters in his own hands and visited the Coinroom headquarters directly after the exchange failed to respond to two of his emails, but with no success.
“The lady at the reception did not want to let me in, she claimed that nobody was in the office. Instead, she called someone from the company with me. I was asked to leave my details. Nobody contacted me,” she said.
Some of the victims have teamed up to file a lawsuit against the Coinroom’s shady operators while others have reported the case to the prosecutor’s office that has already launched an investigation in the case.
“So far, several people have applied. We conduct activities aimed at identifying possible victims. At the moment, it is too early to provide information on the value of possible losses. Due to the confidentiality of the conducted proceedings, we can’t [share] inform[ation] about the implemented and planned activities, as well as the arrangements made at this stage of the proceedings,” Łukasz Łapczyński, spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw, said.