Zhongsheng Mingliang Quantitative AI Wealth Management Staking Scheme: Promising high-interest locked-in virtual currencies under the guise of AI quantitative arbitrage, involving over 300 million RMB

Who Gets Targeted

The primary victims are middle-class individuals and retail crypto investors with some investment experience but a lack of foundational blockchain knowledge. Eager for returns higher than traditional wealth management and credulous of promotional claims such as risk-free artificial intelligence quantitative arbitrage, their psychological weaknesses lie in blind trust in high-tech buzzwords and greedy follow-the-herd behavior after tasting small initial rebates. Ultimately, after the platform locks their funds, they lose everything, and even their retirement savings are forced to zero.

骗局怎么运作

• Packaging AI quantitative arbitrage credentials: Operating under the banner of quantitative AI wealth management, the platform claims to investors that it possesses unique artificial intelligence algorithms capable of high-frequency arbitrage in the cryptocurrency market. By forging trading data or displaying fake backend earnings charts, it makes investors mistakenly believe that the platform has long-term, stable profitability, thereby lowering their guard and investing their cryptocurrencies into unregulated staking pools.
• Promising high staking rebates: Launching virtual currency staking packages of various tiers, using high daily or monthly returns as bait, and promising that as long as Bitcoin or Tether is staked in the platform's designated accounts, investors can enjoy stable weekly fixed rebates. It claims annual yields far exceeding traditional financial institutions, creating the illusion of guaranteed profits under false high-interest temptations and willingly handing over principal.
• Developing downline pyramid rebates: The platform establishes a multi-tier rebate system, encouraging early investors to recruit others to join. Providing dynamic rewards based on the number of referrals and downline investment amounts, it rapidly expands the capital pool scale using acquaintance networks and community fission, giving the entire capital pool typical Ponzi financing characteristics, paying old users' interest with new entrants' principal to maintain the wealth-creation myth and attract more people to enter.
• Manufacturing full-lockup and sudden closures: When the capital pool reaches a certain scale or new funds fail to keep up with withdrawal speeds, the platform unilaterally announces the freezing of investor accounts under the pretext of system upgrades, compliance requirements, or quantitative strategy adjustment needs. It implements full lockups, cuts off all withdrawal channels to prevent capital outflows, and completely traps investors in the fantasy of awaiting unlocking.
• Transferring assets behind the scenes and absconding: During the lockup period, the platform's backend team secretly transfers investors' staked cryptocurrencies to private cold wallets via mixers or over-the-counter channels. Once the assets are transferred, the platform frontend webpage is closed, community group owners disband chats, customer service becomes unreachable, and the mastermind completely finishes harvesting and absconding, leaving investors with unrecoverable virtual assets facing a helpless plight in safeguarding their rights.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 High-interest promises without entity support: Detached from the logic of underlying assets genuinely generating returns, promising fixed high interest far exceeding market averages is a classic characteristic of Ponzi schemes.
• 🚩 Vague AI quantitative strategy explanations: Unable to provide verifiable quantitative trading records and smart contract open-source codes, using various profound technical terms to deflect doubts about profitability logic.
• 🚩 Strong dynamic rewards for recruitment: The rebate mechanism relies heavily on the number of downline members and investment amounts rather than true trading returns, presenting a distinct pyramid-layer capital structure.
• 🚩 Sudden unilateral lockups: Freezing all user assets based solely on a platform announcement without any legal prerequisite procedures, while failing to provide specific dates and plans for unlocking.
• 🚩 Capital flow to non-custodial private wallets: Investors' cryptocurrencies are requested to be transferred to private wallets or lesser-known exchange accounts without third-party audits, rather than regulated multi-signature cold wallets.

真实案例

• According to public reports by stock information networks, the Zhongsheng Mingliang Quantitative AI Wealth Management scheme attracted investors to invest virtual currencies under the name of AI quantitative arbitrage, claiming high rebates. Eventually, the platform fully locked up funds and withdrawals were impossible, trapping investor funds. Shenzhen Public Security has officially opened an investigation, with estimated involved amounts exceeding 300 million RMB, and a large number of victims losing everything.
• In 2026, according to public reports by First Code Alliance, a project named OneAgent (Hermit Crab) traded under the name of AI quantitative virtual currency trading. It was accused of being a reskinned new harvesting tactic by the original team of the Jubi Exchange, originating from Jubi Exchange's 'AI Crab Raising' AI quantitative wealth management project. Jubi Exchange had previously collapsed due to the same model, with user assets dropping to zero; the mastermind team moved to a new platform to continue scamming, involving thousands of users. (Source: [https://www.usay.cc/article/9904.html](https://www.usay.cc/article/9904.html))
• In 2026, according to ChainUP reports, an involved project promising fixed monthly returns of 3% to 10% to a crypto liquidity pool was verified not to have invested as promised, representing a typical asset-mismatch Ponzi structure. High-yield promises coupled with mismatched client deposits and genuine DeFi deployment became an exposed signal of persistent fixed returns, involving millions of dollars. (Source: [https://www.trustformer.info/zh/s-articles/article872](https://www.trustformer.info/zh/s-articles/article872))

Official Stance

• In 2023, the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau officially issued an investigative notification targeting the Zhongsheng Mingliang Quantitative AI Wealth Management scheme for suspected illegal absorption of public deposits, reminding citizens to be vigilant against illegal fundraising activities under the guise of AI quantization and virtual currency staking.
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission jointly launched a lawsuit and warning against a 400 million dollar crypto Ponzi scheme, pointing out that such projects often lack genuine underlying transaction support and warning the public about the fraud risks of high monthly returns.
• The National Internet Finance Safety Technology Committee has repeatedly issued early warnings pointing out that platforms using virtual currency, blockchain, and artificial intelligence as gimmicks to promise high static returns and dynamic rebates all carry extremely high capital pool risks, and investors should resolutely prevent participating in such illegal financial activities.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Verify platform qualifications and custody mechanisms: Before investing in any cryptocurrency staking project, be sure to verify whether the platform holds relevant financial licenses and confirm whether assets are custodied by independent third-party institutions. Never transfer funds directly into unknown personal wallets.
• ✅ Beware of yields detached from common sense: Maintain high suspicion toward projects promising principal protection and fixed returns with annual yields far exceeding traditional financial products. Remember that high yields inevitably come with high risks, and any extremely high rebates claimed to be risk-free are likely scam traps.
• ✅ Refuse blind following and recruitment temptations: Resolutely refrain from participating in projects that require relying on recruiting people to obtain high dynamic rebates, avoiding becoming a link in a Ponzi scheme, and proactively reminding family and friends around you to guard against capital pools cloaked in high-tech outerwear.
• ✅ Properly preserve on-chain transaction evidence: When conducting virtual currency investments, keep core evidence such as deposit addresses, on-chain transfer hashes, platform promotional materials, and chat records. Once encountering lockups or absconding, immediately report to local public security organs to safeguard your rights.
• ✅ Pay attention to official warnings and industry notifications: Regularly check illegal fundraising risk warning lists and notifications published by official departments such as public security and securities regulatory commissions to avoid stepping into capital pool projects that have already been reported or reskinned and reborn, preventing major property losses.