Influential figures in the conspiracy theory community over the past year QAnon convinced hundreds of thousands of followers to invest in fake tokens. This is proven by Logical investigation.

According to analysts, two influential Telegram channels in the conspiracy community, WhipLash347 and Quantum Stellar Initiative (QSI), have promoted fake assets among their numerous subscribers. At the time of writing, they have around 310,000 subscribers in total.

They claimed to have access to some confidential data and therefore knew which assets to invest in. They also claimed to have ties to “Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Kennedy” and said that “aliens would facilitate the transfer of ‘quantum’ wealth to their followers”.

Most of the tokens promoted by the channels were created on the Stellar blockchain under the Indus.gold brand. The “company” was said to be investing in gold around the world. Indian bank IndusInd Bank has a product called Indus Gold, but it has nothing to do with the assets promoted by WhipLash347 and QSI.

Indus.gold has issued dozens of coins, 15 of which are sold on a large scale. Many entities had similar names to various companies to inspire greater investor confidence. None of them were actually associated with real firms.

For example, the Sungold token introduced on WhipLash347 and QSI is presented as a “Kazakh gold mine backed” asset. He was allegedly linked to the Russian company of the same name. The researchers found no evidence of this link, but the Sungold scheme brought QAnon officials about $2 million, logically calculated:

“Indus.gold and the Sungold token are just one of dozens of examples in a long list that airs weekly on WhipLash347/QSI. In most cases, assets were linked based on blockchain analysis or via IP addresses of domains hosting websites advertising tokens.

Many tokens are labeled as fake by Stellar.

The victims of these schemes were many people who lost millions of dollars in total. One of the investors committed suicide after almost completely losing over $100,000 invested in WhipLash347 promotion tokens.

Channel managers, in response to the researchers’ questions, said that they do not provide investment advice and that users themselves are responsible if they lose their funds.

According to the US Federal Trade Commission, from January 2021 to March 2022, investors lost more than $1 billion as a result of fraud related to digital assets.

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