The Delio and Haru Consecutive Collapses: High-Interest Virtual Asset Custody Ponzi Scheme

Who Gets Targeted

The victims were primarily retail investors aged 20 to 50 holding mainstream virtual assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, including office workers, self-employed individuals, and some aggressive investors who entered the market via borrowing. Around 16,000 users of Haru Invest and several thousand clients of Delio fell victim. They were generally hooked by pitches of 'principal-guaranteed high returns' and 'risk-free quantitative arbitrage,' lacking the ability to verify the qualifications of centralized platforms and the destination of funds. Driven by herd mentality and wishful thinking that 'big platforms won't fail' and 'everyone else is making money,' some poured their entire savings or even leveraged funds into these platforms amid declining interest rates. Following the collapse, many faced years of dead-ends in seeking restitution, with a few suffering psychological breakdowns and resorting to extremes.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: High-yield packaging for traffic generation. The platform advertised fixed returns of 12% to 16% or even higher annualized simply by depositing virtual assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It touted professional quantitative teams, hedging arbitrage, and zero principal risk, using pitches like 'earn interest on coins, generate passive income effortlessly' to lure retail investors with limited knowledge of crypto investments.
• Step 2: Obscuring fund destinations. After user deposits, assets were centrally pooled into platform-controlled wallets. Delio transferred a large volume of client custody assets to Haru Invest and related entities such as B&S Holdings for so-called quantitative operations, leaving ordinary users completely unable to verify the actual deployment of funds and counterparty risks.
• Step 3: Concealing losses and using new funds to pay old debts. Following industry shocks such as the collapse of FTX which resulted in genuine losses, the platform failed to disclose the facts. Instead, it used principal deposited by new users to pay interest to older users to maintain the illusion of normal redemptions. Delio even falsely listed holdings of 605.939 Bitcoins and 2,511.591 Ethereums in its audit report, which were merely database numbers.
• Step 4: Sudden freezing, bank runs, and collapse. On June 13, 2023, Haru Invest abruptly suspended deposits and withdrawals under the pretext that a partner had submitted false information. Just a day later on June 14, Delio also announced an emergency suspension of withdrawals and deposits under the guise of 'protecting customer asset security.' In reality, the capital chain had completely snapped, leaving massive amounts of user assets trapped.
• Step 5: Protracted bankruptcy liquidation. Following the collapse, the platform entered judicial proceedings. On November 22, 2024, the Seoul court declared Delio bankrupt with liabilities of approximately 245 billion South Korean won, requiring clients to file claims by February 21, 2025. The liquidation cycle spans years, and retail investors recover negligible proportions, forming a complete harvesting closed loop of 'high-yield promise—fund misappropriation—freezing—liquidation.'

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Promises of fixed high yields: Virtual assets are extremely volatile. Any coin-depositing product claiming annualized returns above 10% with guaranteed principal and profits is mathematically unsustainable and serves as a classic bait for a Ponzi structure.
• 🚩 Opaque fund custody: The platform refuses to publicly disclose cold wallet addresses, proof of reserves, or third-party audits. Once users deposit funds, they cannot track asset flows and can only see numerical balances in their accounts.
• 🚩 Intertwined and tangled affiliate benefits: The platform claims to hand over funds to 'professional partners' for operation, but refuses to disclose partner identities and risk control agreements. Only upon a meltdown is it discovered to be deeply bound to another high-risk platform.
• 🚩 Sudden suspension of withdrawals under excuses such as 'partner falsification,' 'asset protection,' or 'system maintenance,' with recovery dates constantly delayed—a standard playbook before a fund platform breaks.
• 🚩 Doubtful registration qualifications or falsified declaration documents: The platform claims compliant registration, but is later found to have submitted false audit reports and asset proofs, indicating its filing materials were unreliable from the start.
• 🚩 Endorsement by scale halos such as 'South Korea's largest' or 'industry leader' to induce users to abandon independent due diligence and treat scale as a security guarantee.

真实案例

• On June 13, 2023, South Korean virtual asset custody platform Haru Invest suspended user deposits and withdrawals without warning. The following day, its affiliated platform Delio simultaneously suspended withdrawals and deposits, freezing assets of thousands of investors. According to public reports, Haru involved approximately 16,000 users, with total virtual asset scales reaching hundreds of billions of South Korean won. (Source: [https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/singapore/story20230615-1404471](https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/singapore/story20230615-1404471))
• In August 2024, a 51-year-old South Korean male investor who lost about 100 Bitcoins in Haru Invest attacked the Haru CEO with a knife at the trial scene, injuring his neck. The attacker was subsequently indicted by prosecutors for attempted murder. This case was reported by multiple public media outlets, highlighting the extreme psychological trauma inflicted by the scam on victims.
• On November 22, 2024, the Seoul court officially declared Delio bankrupt, with overdue client assets amounting to approximately 245 billion South Korean won (reported to be roughly equivalent to 1.75 billion USD). Creditors were required to file claims by February 21, 2025, and the first creditors' meeting was scheduled for March 19, 2025, leaving numerous retail investors facing a bleak and distant prospect of proportional recovery.
• On August 13, 2026, according to public reports, the Seoul Southern District Court sentenced Delio CEO Mr. Jung to 15 years in prison. The court ruled that he submitted false documents during the virtual asset service provider registration and falsely listed holdings of 605.939 Bitcoins and 2,511.591 Ethereums in audit reports. This is South Korea's first felony sentence against a virtual asset service provider's head under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information.
• In June 2023, according to Lianhe Zaobao citing Bloomberg, South Korean digital asset lending service firm Delio suspended the receipt and extraction of assets citing market volatility, following Haru Invest's suspension of deposit and withdrawal services on June 13. Delio's website indicated it managed 41,740 Bitcoins (valued at approximately 1.1 billion USD) and 118,033 Ethereums. (Source: [https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/singapore/story20230615-1404471](https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/singapore/story20230615-1404471))
• In August 2024, according to blockchain media BlockTempo, the CEO of Haru Invest—a South Korean virtual asset custody company suspected of embezzling 826 million USD in customer assets—was attacked with a knife by an attending victim client during court appearances, suffering several stab wounds to the neck before being rushed to the hospital. Prosecutors indicted three executives for stealing cryptocurrency worth approximately 1.1 trillion won from about 16,000 users. (Source: [https://www.blocktempo.com/haru-invest-ceo-stabbed-in-court-during-fraud-trial/](https://www.blocktempo.com/haru-invest-ceo-stabbed-in-court-during-fraud-trial/))

Official Stance

• In September 2023, the Financial Services Commission of South Korea announced regarding the consecutive collapses of Haru Invest and Delio that, in accordance with the legislative direction of the newly enacted Virtual Asset User Protection Act, virtual asset business entities are prohibited from providing deposit and management services and must actually hold client-entrusted assets.
• Between June and July 2023, South Korean prosecutors issued arrest warrants and travel bans for key figures of Haru Invest and Delio, launching investigations against multiple executives on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
• In November 2024, the South Korean court officially declared Delio into bankruptcy liquidation proceedings, confirming through judicial rulings that the platform was unable to repay customer assets.
• In August 2026, the Seoul Southern District Court sentenced Delio's CEO to 15 years in prison, confirming through a criminal ruling that false declarations and fraudulent behaviors constitute felonies, signaling an official stance of high-pressure accountability against virtual asset custody chaos.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Remember 'Not your keys, not your coins': Virtual assets held long-term should be transferred to hardware wallets or decentralized wallets where you control the private keys, keeping only small amounts needed for trading on platforms.
• ✅ Treat any deposit, quantitative, or custody product promising fixed high yields (especially annualized over 10%) as a scam signal. Returns inevitably correspond to risk, and risk-free high yields do not hold up logically.
• ✅ Verify qualifications and reserves before entering: Check whether the platform is genuinely registered with domestic financial regulatory authorities and whether it discloses verifiable proof of reserves and third-party audits. Beware of platforms registered solely overseas with non-transparent information.
• ✅ Principles of diversification and limits: Do not invest all savings into a single platform or product. Never borrow or leverage to participate in high-yield wealth management, keeping potential losses within a tolerable range.
• ✅ Take action immediately after an incident: Preserve deposit records, contracts, and chat evidence. Report to domestic police or financial regulatory authorities at the earliest opportunity, file claims in bankruptcy proceedings promptly, hire lawyers for collective rights protection if necessary, and guard against secondary scams during rights protection.