An Austrian court has just sentenced five individuals for the EXW-Token scam, one of the largest crypto fraud cases in the country’s history. What stands out is the scale: 40,000 investors were duped into €20 million through an elaborate Ponzi-style MLM scheme that promised impossible daily returns of 0.1%–0.32%.

The trial lasted an entire year, with 60 days of hearings. What emerges from the details is how the fraud was planned from the start, rather than a legitimate project that got out of hand, as the defendants tried to argue. The convicted individuals indulged in a completely reckless lifestyle with the stolen money: private jets, parties in Dubai, villas with shark tanks. Something that seems straight out of a movie.

Two of the convicted received five years in prison. Among them is Pirmin Troger, one of the co-founders of the EXW wallet, who had already pleaded guilty in September 2023. The others received sentences ranging from 30 months to 18 months, suspended. The third co-founder, Manuel Batista, remains at large.

But what I want to emphasize is the bigger picture. This case involving Pirmin Troger and the others is not isolated. Crypto scams have become a mass phenomenon. In 2023 alone, losses from crypto-related fraud surpassed $5.6 billion worldwide, a 45% increase compared with the year before. In October, a trial was launched in Stati Uniti against 20 people for a $30 million scam. A few days earlier, an Indian citizen was sentenced to five years for stealing more than $20 million by falsifying an eexchange. In Stati Uniti, a court ordered a Ponzi scheme promoter to pay $3.6 million in compensation and serve 240 months in prison.

Irish police reported that more than 45% of investment-fraud cases in the country involve cryptocurrencies. The scammers don’t slow down despite the severity of the penalties. They exploit the allure of high returns and the complexity of the blockchain to deceive ordinary people. Fake projects, Ponzi structures, misleading tokens. Authorities are stepping up their actions, but clearly it’s still not enough. The case of Pirmin Troger and the EXW network is a reminder of how important it is to do your due diligence before investing in any crypto project—especially those promising returns that are too good to be true.