Fake Carbon Neutrality Token Scam: Wash Trading to Pump Prices and Dumping on Retail Investors

Who Gets Targeted

Victims are mostly ordinary retail investors who care about environmental policies and hope to profit through green investments, particularly middle-aged and elderly individuals, stay-at-home mothers, and working-class people lacking blockchain knowledge. Often attracted by grand narratives such as 'low-carbon future' and 'carbon sink assets' and greedy for promised doubled returns, they lack the ability to distinguish the technical authenticity and abnormal trading volumes of the tokens. Seeing continuous price increases and 'teachers' calling orders in community groups, they let down their guard and even wagered their retirement savings and down payments, ultimately losing everything after the crash.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Fabricating a Carbon Neutrality Project. The operating team concocted gimmicks such as 'international carbon sink development' and 'forestry carbon sink assets,' produced exquisite whitepapers and fake carbon certification certificates, claimed the tokens were backed by real carbon credits, and propagated the concept of 'green financial innovation' in official websites and communities to attract environment-conscious investors. They frequently misappropriated names or images of well-known institutions to make the project look professional and reliable.
• Step 2: Issuing Tokens and Listing on Fringe Exchanges. The team issued tokens via smart contracts and paid fees to list them on laxly vetted small digital currency exchanges, creating the illusion of being 'listed.' Meanwhile, they arranged for 'customer service' to frequently post listing announcements in communities claiming 'partnership with multiple international carbon exchanges,' making people believe the project had real transactions and landing scenarios, whereas the tokens actually had no asset anchoring.
• Step 3: Wash Trading to Drive Up Prices. Controlling multiple wallet accounts, the operating team conducted reciprocal trades on trading platforms—where one account bought low and another sold high—artificially manufacturing consecutive rising K-line charts and massive trading volumes. At the same time, they utilized bot order-scraping to give retail investors the illusion of 'main force accumulation' and 'imminent explosive growth.' Such operations are extremely easy to achieve on low-liquidity exchanges with very low costs and barriers.
• Step 4: Community Order-Calling and KOL Hype. Through WeChat groups, Telegram, short videos, and other channels, they organized 'analysts' and 'shills' to continuously publish bullish analysis, display fake profit screenshots, promise 'carbon neutrality dividends' and 'hundredfold returns,' and even launch a 'referral commission' mechanism to encourage old users to recruit new members and expand the pool of bagholders. Rhetoric often featured phrases like 'last chance to board' and 'miss it and wait another decade.'
• Step 5: Inducing Retail Investors to Chase Highs. After prices were driven to high levels, the operating team used scarcity rhetoric such as 'limited-time flash sales' and 'subscription lotteries' to lure retail investors into buying at the top. At this point, the 'shills' who bought earlier began to sell gradually, transferring chips to real users chasing the highs. Seeing prices still rising and mistakenly thinking there was more room for growth, retail investors successively increased their investments.
• Step 6: High-Level Distribution and Crash. When new capital dried up and prices could no longer be sustained, the operating team dumped remaining tokens en masse, subsequently closed communities, deleted official websites, delisted trading pairs, and even withdrew liquidity from exchanges. Tokens held by retail investors instantly dropped to zero or became unsellable with nowhere to turn for complaints. The entire cycle often lasted only a few weeks to months, leaving only a tiny fraction of value after the underlying pool was drained.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 The whitepaper content is pieced together and plagiarized, the project team is anonymous with no real office address or public identity, and core members' professional experience cannot be found.
• 🚩 It claims tokens are backed by carbon credits or carbon sink assets, yet fails to produce any emission reduction proof issued by authoritative institutions, such as CCER filed with the National Development and Reform Commission or international verification agency documents.
• 🚩 Trading volume is highly concentrated, with buy and sell orders frequently placed by a minority of accounts, prices surging and plunging in a short period, and completely unrelated to the trends of mainstream coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
• 🚩 It promises 'fixed returns,' 'guaranteed profits,' or 'hundreds of times annualized returns,' and sets up multi-level rewards like 'recruiting commission,' bearing obvious characteristics of multi-level marketing (MLM).
• 🚩 Trading occurs only on small exchanges or self-developed platforms, cannot be found on mainstream data stations like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, and features complicated withdrawal processes and frequent 'maintenance.'
• 🚩 A massive number of 'shills' post profits in the community, dissenters are swiftly kicked out of group chats, official channels talk only about profits without risks, and no negative questions are accepted.

真实案例

• Eco-Coin CPT: According to Project Cooperation Network reports on January 26, 2026, the eco-coin CPT—which claimed to be 'carbon neutral'—publicly raised hundreds of millions of yuan before crashing. However, it collapsed just 60 days after listing, with the project party absconding with funds. The bottom pool was left with only 90 dollars, a large number of retail investors lost everything, and investors attempting to seek recourse at the exchange found the project party had lost contact.
• GEC Eco-Coin: According to project analysis station reports, GEC Eco-coin operated for 8 years under the guise of 'eco-mining,' harvesting about 2 million participants cumulatively and absorbing vast amounts of retirement savings from the elderly and down payments from young people. Eventually, the virtual tokens plummeted and cleared to zero, and investors in multiple regions organized rights-retrieval efforts, but hopes of recovering funds remained slim. (Source: [https://xmfenxi.com/article/1994.html](https://xmfenxi.com/article/1994.html))
• ‘Pu'er Tea Coin’ Scam: According to China Pu'er Tea Network reports, a syndicate concocted the 'Pu'er Currency' project, claiming a green ecological concept of 'cryptocurrency plus billions in Tibetan tea collections plus block chains,' absorbing funds through issuing air coins and promising tea industry dividends. After the crash, investors discovered that the purported tea industry assets did not exist and the project party had already dissolved the company.
• In July 2025, the Shanghai People's Procuratorate disclosed a case involving fugitive suspects in a collectible scam being captured: eight years ago, Luo and accomplices set up a collectible scam under the pretext of appraising and auctioning antiques, swindling clients out of more than 13 million yuan in various service fees including appraisal fees, testing fees, exhibition fees, and auction fees. After fleeing for eight years, Luo was finally arrested (Source: [https://www.sh.jcy.gov.cn/jcfy/sytp/127713.jhtml](https://www.sh.jcy.gov.cn/jcfy/sytp/127713.jhtml))

Official Stance

• On August 3, 2026, the official Weibo account of the Economic Crime Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security reposted an article titled 'Targeting Securities and Futures Crimes: The Traps Behind Live-Streamed Stock Recommendations,' warning against criminal acts such as live-streamed stock recommendations and wash trading to manipulate the market to lure investors into taking over, and reminding the public not to participate in virtual asset transactions from unknown sources.
• On May 19, 2026, CCTV News exposed a gold trading scam on a fake trading platform, reporting that a criminal syndicate manipulated prices through wash trading, absconding with a total of 280 million yuan from investors, and reminding the public to be wary of any online trading platform claiming 'guaranteed profits.'
• According to Sina News reprinting a police notification, local police cracked down on a stock recommendation scam where a 2724-member stock trading group consisted entirely of shills. Victims including Mr. Lin were guided to invest in fake platforms, losing 300,000 yuan. Police reminded the public that 'teachers' calling orders and posting profits in groups are common scam tactics.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Verify the Project's Underlying Assets: Require the project party to provide verified emission reduction proof filed by an authoritative carbon exchange or the National Development and Reform Commission, and cross-check it with official databases. Anything that fails to provide it or is vague should be deemed high risk.
• ✅ Observe Trading Behavior: Check token listing status and trading volume on mainstream data platforms like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. If daily trading volume is found to be contributed by wash trading from a minority of accounts and price trends are unrelated to the broader market, stay away immediately.
• ✅ Reject High-Return Promises: Any project claiming 'fixed returns,' 'annualized doubling,' or 'carbon neutrality dividends' may be a Ponzi scheme. Remember that 'principal-guaranteed high interest' equals a scam, and do not be rushed into ordering by rhetoric such as 'limited-time flash sales.'
• ✅ Use Regular Channels and Retain Evidence: Trade only on compliant licensed exchanges, do not purchase through private transfers or unfamiliar links, and once abnormalities are found, save chat logs, transfer vouchers, and promotional materials, and report to public security organs or local financial regulatory departments in a timely manner.