AI ecosystem shell air coin pyramid scheme: claims AI computing power and agent dividends, but is actually a collapsed rebranded money game scam

Who Gets Targeted

The victims are mainly grassroots investors from their twenties or thirties to their forties or fifties, as well as part-time workers in lower-tier markets. Most lack financial literacy and the ability to discern blockchain technology, yet are extremely eager to achieve class leap through so-called trends. Such victims easily have their greed struck by rhetoric about artificial intelligence computing power dividends and passive dividends, and fall into the sunk cost fallacy because of the early sweetness of quick payback from recruiting people. When the project enters the selective-cut or collapse stage, they often miss the stop-loss window because they have been brainwashed into holding firm, and even take out online loans to continue investing, ultimately losing everything.

骗局怎么运作

• Piggybacking on hot AI concepts to rebrand and resurrect: the operating team usually packages an already collapsed old project as an artificial intelligence computing power aggregation platform or agent ecosystem protocol, externally claiming to have an exclusive large model or computing power network. By forging technical white papers, fabricating overseas foundation backgrounds and elite university team résumés, they rename a worthless air coin as a new token, thereby washing off the negative impact of the old case and attracting uninformed investors to enter again.
• Fabricating a mechanism linking computing power to dividends: the project claims that users buying tokens is equivalent to subscribing to artificial intelligence computing power nodes, and the system will automatically convert computing power output daily or weekly into stablecoin or new token dividends. In reality, the so-called computing power output is just numbers issued out of thin air by the backend risk control system, completely relying on new incoming funds to pay old users' returns, creating the illusion of stable self-generating income.
• Pyramid-style fission with commissions for recruiting: it designs direct referral rewards, indirect referral rewards, and team differential commission systems, requiring participants to continuously recruit new people to unlock higher dividend tiers and withdrawal limits. In communities, shills are arranged to post fake income screenshots, brainwashing scripts, and a hundred-billion ecosystem blueprint, exploiting victims' reluctance to accept that they cannot recover their principal to push them to mobilize relatives and friends, forming a multi-layer pyramid capital structure.
• Selective account bans and coin price manipulation to force liquidation: when new incoming funds are insufficient to pay promised returns, operators use system upgrades or cracking down on airdrop hunters as an excuse to selectively ban and freeze specific large withdrawal accounts. At the same time, through a deposit pool controlled by the project team, they dump coins, causing the coin price to crash and forcing retail investors to cut losses in panic, while the operating team quietly transfers the raised assets on-chain to cold wallets.
• Destroying evidence and fleeing with funds moved overseas: at the critical point of collapse, the project team closes frontend access, clears community records, deletes social media accounts, and the core team moves funds overseas through coin mixers or cross-chain bridges. It then issues statements about hacker attacks or policy force majeure, shifting responsibility to external factors, completely cutting ties and preparing for the next round of AI new-concept rebranding.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Claiming absurdly high daily returns (such as daily interest of 1% to 4%), with annualized returns far exceeding any normal commercial return, and promising principal and interest guaranteed.
• 🚩 The token is not listed on mainstream compliant exchanges and can only be traded on project-built or obscure small exchanges, with extremely poor liquidity and prices manipulated unilaterally by the project team.
• 🚩 High static and dynamic returns can only be obtained by recruiting people, with more than three levels and rebates based on headcount or performance, showing typical pyramid scheme characteristics.
• 🚩 The so-called artificial intelligence computing power or agent products cannot be verified and are not open source; the official website is full of grand narratives but has no actual application scenarios, and the white paper is copied and pieced together.
• 🚩 The core team is anonymous or uses false foreign backgrounds; customer service and community administrators frequently change project names and token names, and there are links to previous collapse-and-exit scams.

真实案例

• According to public disclosure by the Anti-Fraud and Scam Prevention Network, after the project named Aqi AI collapsed, the original ARK team rebranded and resurrected, continuing the old distribution scheme under the guise of the AI trend, borrowing concepts to mislead investors into entering, ultimately causing a large number of participants' funds to be trapped. (Source: https://fanzhafp.com/article/4998.html)
• According to an early warning report by Project Home, the AIC Crayfish Consensus Protocol was listed by anti-fraud platforms in multiple places as a pure air coin high-risk scam. The project packaged tokens with a consensus mechanism, attracting many uninformed people to subscribe; participants may lose everything and also bear criminal liability.
• According to relevant news reports, police busted a virtual currency pyramid scheme involving over 1 billion yuan. The organization deceived 110,000 members into joining by issuing air coins, frenziedly absorbing money through recruitment and high dividends, and was ultimately rounded up by police.
• In May 2025, in an illegal absorption of public deposits case handled by the People's Procuratorate of Xuanwu District, Nanjing, criminals from February 2024 promoted the 'China Computing Power' app in the name of the 'China Computing Power' project team, issuing 'China Computing Power Coin' sold by the company itself with coin value internally manipulated, using check-in cashback and referral rebates as bait to develop a large number of downlines, involving more than 160 people. Defendants Wu and Zhang were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of one year and eleven months respectively, a typical AI computing power shell air coin money game. (Source: https://www.jsjc.gov.cn/yaowen/202511/t20251124_1150118.shtml)
• In October 2021, China Daily reported that Suzhou Miyun Technology Company had since July 2019, in the name of selling 'mining machines' computing power, relied on the Miyun App to require participants to register and pay to obtain qualifications, and used the number of developed members and purchased computing power as the basis for rebates, with more than 4,500 registered accounts and 19 cash levels, absorbing over 55 million yuan in pyramid scheme funds. Principal criminal Qin Chao and five others were convicted of organizing and leading pyramid scheme activities and sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from five years and three months to one year and four months. (Source: https://cn.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202110/22/WS61722e05a3107be4979f4200.html)
• According to the Anti-Fraud and Scam Prevention Network on August 4, 2026, after the project named Aqi AI collapsed, the original ARK team rebranded and resurrected, continuing the old distribution scheme under the guise of the AI trend: the project quickly gained attention through authoritative media press releases and strategic cooperation endorsement at the Bangkok Summit, with an 'AI value three-layer architecture', focusing on AI ecosystem dividends and old asset mapping to recover principal, attracting a large number of investors. (Source: https://fanzhafp.com/article/4998.html)

Official Stance

• In September 2021, the People's Bank of China, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Supreme People's Court, and other ten departments jointly issued the Notice on Further Preventing and Handling Risks of Virtual Currency Trading Speculation, clarifying that virtual currency-related business is illegal financial activity.
• In March 2022, the National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association, and the Securities Association of China jointly issued an initiative on preventing NFT-related financial risks, warning against acts of virtual currency fraud under the name of technology concepts.
• In 2026, public security anti-fraud centers in multiple places, based on crime trends, repeatedly issued warnings through official public accounts about air coin pyramid schemes cloaked in AI and computing power, urging citizens not to participate in so-called high-interest dividend projects.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Do not readily trust any artificial intelligence computing power or virtual currency project claiming high interest, principal guarantee, or passive dividends. If the return rate exceeds 10%, be prepared to lose all principal.
• ✅ Verify whether the project code is open source and review on-chain transaction records; be wary of tokens circulating only on self-built platforms, lacking real application scenarios, and white papers that are crudely pieced together.
• ✅ Refuse to participate in any project that requires recruiting people to unlock returns or withdrawals. Once rebate levels exceed three tiers, exit immediately and report to public security authorities.
• ✅ Install the National Anti-Fraud Center app on your phone and enable incoming call alerts. When encountering virtual currency investment inducements, submit leads through the 12321 Network Bad and Spam Information Reporting Platform.