Citibank accused of ignoring suspicious transactions in $20 million crypto scam

PANews reported on June 26 that according to Cointelegraph, Michael Zidell, a victim of a cryptocurrency scam, sued Citibank in the Manhattan Federal Court, accusing the bank of ignoring suspicious transaction warnings, causing him to be defrauded of $20 million. The lawsuit shows that Zidell transferred money to multiple bank accounts controlled by the scammers through 43 transfers, of which nearly $4 million was transferred to the Citibank Guju Inc. company account.

This "pig killing" scam began in 2023. The scammer disguised himself as a businessman "Carolyn Parker" and induced Zidell to invest in NFT through Facebook. The complaint pointed out that Citibank did not investigate the frequent abnormal transfers of large integers, violating its anti-money laundering monitoring obligations. When Zidell discovered that the trading platform called OpenrarityPro was suddenly closed, the funds could no longer be recovered.