Crypto fraudster stole $100 million, spent it all on 'sugar babies'

A 24-year-old Canberra, Australia-born cryptocurrency fraudster, has explained why he stole $123 million from investors in a tell-all interview before going to prison for 7 years.

Stefan Qin sat down for a tell-all interview with EST Media to discuss his motives behind stealing $123 million from investors and what the money was spent on. Qin explains that after dropping out of the University of New South Wales in 2016 and moving to China, he began getting into cryptocurrency, where he worked at a crypto exchange. Qin created software and formed his own company Virgill Sigma Fund, which then received millions in funding from investors.

Qin goes on to explain his motivation for scamming investors, citing bullying and harassment that started in school and eventuated into "extreme depression and suicidal tendencies" by the time he entered high school, combined with the pressure of the "Asian community to be as successful as possible at all costs", and the pain he felt from his girlfriend cheating on him whom he was in love, led him to the mindset of deliberately misleading investors.

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"First of all I had a betrayal from my co-founders, it wasn't so much a betrayal as in a split of opinion, and the second thing is I lost my virginity in 2017, which was huge to this girl, and I was madly in love with her and then she cheated on me with some guy who was richer than I was," he said.

You have this beautiful girl that you think you are going to spend the rest of your life with and you're not rich enough for her. But long story short because my co-founders left now I was the one who was 100 per cent in control of the entire company and if you're 21 years old and you're the only one with access to all these bank accounts that's a recipe for disaster and that's essentially what happened."

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The fraudster says he became "addicted" to sugar babies and that the only reason he had a three-bedroom house was so he could have three "sugar babies at any given point of time". Qin says that this is where the majority of the money has gone.

"Honestly, this is so f**ked up to say but the only reason I had a three-bedroom place was because I had three sugar babies at any given point of time ... and that's my biggest regret because that's what I spent the money on," he revealed.

"Because if it was material stuff, if it was stuff like cars ... at least the (US Securities and Exchange Commission) can take that and sell that. How can they get money back from sugar babies?"

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When Virgill Sigma Fund had $2 million invested in 2018, The Wall Street Journal published a story about the company that described Qin as the "bitcoin wunderkind" that raised the company $65 million in just one month. Additionally, Qin was interviewed by CNBC, where he recommended investors prospect for business in Western and Eastern markets for opportunities, which he later admitted to being "fake".

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"A good hedge fund manager would never give away their competitive opportunities like that," he said.

"The reason I was OK with giving that up was because I wasn't actually trading them, even though I said I was. It was all fake."

"I actually had 200 bitcoins in wallet and at the time in December 2020 it was about $US4 million or $US5 million. I could have run away, got a plastic surgery face, got a new passport and lived off 200 bitcoins for a good amount of time," he revealed.

"Because that's a lot of money for a lot of people. I probably would have ended up wasting away that 200 bitcoin on stupid things, like learning how to live a normal life more like an adult or trying to impress people like girls ... in the next five to six years, so it would have been useless."

"I'm just saying its none of the investors fault and I choose to go down that route but I felt immense pressure to inflate the returns and just lie because I needed to match the expectations that they had this image in their head of this wunderkid that could make them a lot of money. And unless I met that image I was a failure and maybe I would go back to being bullied again and go back to people making fun of me and never having friends again." he said

"No one grows up and thinks to themselves, hey I want to steal $US100 million."

If you are interested in reading more about what Qin admits to check out the above video.