Crypto YouTuber ‘steals’ $700,000 from fans and is refusing to give it back

His followers reportedly sunk their money into a bogus investment allowing him to pocket the cash and buy himself a brand new Tesla.

A YouTube star allegedly scammed fans out of $US700,000 ($A700,000) in what has been described as a ‘pump and dump’ crypto scheme.

Paul Denino, who is also known as “Ice Poseidon,” has apparently received half a million dollars from fans in a crypto scam that was uncovered by YouTuber Coffeezilla, the US Sun reports.

The 27-year-old American internet personality allegedly asked his fans on YouTube to invest in a new cryptocurrency called ‘CXcoin,’ which he claimed would be a long-term project.

However, after the crypto went up in value just two weeks later, Denino allegedly sold all of his holdings for a profit, causing the remaining CXcoin held by fans to drop in value.

Denino reportedly walked away with $US300,000 ($A420,000) and a new Tesla, and gave $US200,000 ($A280,000) to the developers, according to Coffeezilla, a YouTuber who investigates fraudsters.

Stream more finance news live & on demand with Flash, a dedicated news streaming service. New to Flash? Try 14 days free now >

American streamer Paul Denino has reportedly scammed fans out of $A700,000.

The self-proclaimed “internet detective” shared a 23-minute video discussing the scheme, as well as some snippets of a conversation he had with Denino.

When confronted about the scam in the call with Coffeezilla, Denino stated that “sometimes you have to look out for yourself,” and that “part of the responsibility is on [the fans] as well, for putting too much emotion into it”.

At one point in the interview, Coffeezilla stated that Denino could return the money if he wished, to which Denino replied, “if you want the answer, yeah I could give the money back, it is within my power, but I am going to look out for myself and not do that”.

Coffeezilla shared on a Twitter thread that after getting word of this story, Denino said he would return $US155,000 ($A217,000) of the money, but that has not been confirmed.

Ice Poseidon claims he had good intentions and that the project was “dead” when he took the money and ran. But evidence from the Telegram shows him telling investors that this was a “long term project” despite him abandoning the project after only two weeks of work. pic.twitter.com/w7tiDhaiU4

— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) January 31, 2022

“After realising a story would be run on this: Ice told me he was going to ‘return $155K’, which is a small fraction of what he took. However, he once again has lied, because to date – only $40K has been returned to the liquidity pool,” Coffeezilla tweeted.

This is not the first time Denino has faced controversy.

In 2017, the streamer was banned from the Amazon-owned platform Twitch because of a publicity bomb hoax on an aeroplane.

Since then, Denino has streamed regularly on YouTube.

The Sun has reached out to Denino for comment but has not heard back at the time of this article being published.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission