The OTCAI “click a button” Ponzi has collapsed.

Launched in April 2022, OTCAI lasted just under a month before the scammers behind it pulled the plug.

At time of publication attempts to visit OTCAI’s website returns a “connection refused” error.

OTCAI affiliates invested tether (USDT), on the promise of advertised returns.

OTCAI’s “click a button” Ponzi ruse was clicking a button generated trading activity.

This was of course baloney. All OTCAI were doing was recycling invested funds to pay returns.

The MLM side of OTCAI paid commissions on recruitment of affiliate investors:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 15%
  • level 2 – 10%
  • level 3 – 5%

What differentiated OTCAI from all the cookie-cutter “click a button” app Ponzis, was the use of a Boris CEO:

As you’d expect, “Romser Bennett” was a typical Boris CEO actor with an eastern European accent.

Boris CEOs are typically the work of Russian scammers, whereas “click a button” Ponzis are coming out of south-east Asia.

OTCAI suggests there might be some crossover happening in scamworld.

We either have Russians farming out their app Ponzis to China, or the Chinese farming out production to the Russian Boris CEO factory.

Note that OTCAI isn’t the first “click a button” app Ponzi to feature a Boris CEO. 365 Ball had one too.

In any event OTCAI was relatively short-lived so financial damage from its collapse was limited.

That said, SimilarWeb estimates OTCAI collapsed around the peak of investor recruitment activity:

Circa May 2022, top sources of traffic to OTCA’s website were Ghana (30%), Indonesia (17%), Peru (8%) and Russia (5%).

OTCAI is part of a group of “click a button” app Ponzis launched over the past few months.

Thus far BehindMLM has documented:

  • COTP – pretended affiliates clicking a button generated trading activity, collapsed May 2022
  • EthTRX is a similar app-based Ponzi, with the daily task component disabled
  • Yu Klik – pretends clicking a button generates trading activity, targeting Indonesia
  • KKBT – pretended clicking a button generates crypto mining revenue, targeted South Africa and India & collapsed early June 2022
  • EasyTask 888 – pretends clicking a button was tied to social media manipulation (YouTube likes), targets Colombia
  • DF Finance – pretended clicking a button generated “purchase data” which was sold to ecommerce platforms, collapsed June 2022
  • Shared989 – pretended clicking a button was tied to social media manipulation (YouTube likes etc.), collapsed June 2022
  • 86FB – pretended clicking a button was tied to gambling on football match outcomes, collapsed April 2022
  • 0W886 – pretended clicking a button was tied to gambling on football match outcomes, collapsed May 2022
  • U91 – pretended clicking a button was tied to gambling on football match outcomes, collapsed May 2022
  • 365Ball – pretends clicking a button is tied to gambling on football match outcomes, (has collapsed multiple already)
  • YLCH Football – pretends clicking a button is tied to gambling on football match outcomes
  • Parkour – pretends clicking a button is tied to social media manipulation (YouTube likes etc.)

There are more of these scams around that I haven’t got to yet.

All the recent app-based task Ponzis appear to be launched by the same group of scammers.

Based on the use of simplified Chinese, I suspect the group are operating out of China or Singapore.

 

Update 5th April 2024 – Google has sued Chinese nationals Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung, alleging they are behind OTCAI and other “click a button” app Ponzis.