:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/prosandconsofbuyinghouseinallcash-cfa422d673c24a9bba4385836a38daec.jpg "\"I lost my house, I lost all my money. Retirees Sue Banks for Losing Crypto Funds")
Katrina de Sollier is looking forward to a comfortable retirement. She had finished working as a nurse, paid off the mortgage on her Victoria home and had some savings in the bank.
Friends he met through an online marketing group introduced him to an investment opportunity called HyperFund, which he intended to use as a source of retirement income. After initially investing a small amount, he invested 80 thousand dollars.
A month later the money ran out.
"I lost my home," she said three years later. "I lost all my money. I couldn't pay the mortgage. I had a lot of debt. When I sold the house and paid off the mortgage balance, I didn't have much left at that point."
De Sollier, now 71, says he lives on a pension that doesn't exceed his rent.
"Now I don't have five cents either in the bank or in my pocket. I can't go to the dentist. I can't keep the car well.
“It's not, and it continues. I can't even analyze my [audience]. I have friends who deliver food parcels to the front door. I have nothing else."
The experience left De Sollier devastated and suicidal.
“I was really depressed and wanted to kill myself. It's scary to admit it to someone, but I feel it.
"I continue to wake up every morning and sob. Every morning since this happened, I can't wake up without wanting to forgive myself and blame myself."
De Solieux is one of many Australians who lost money in the HyperVerse project and has joined a legal initiative to recover the lost money, which oversees the project's transfers.
Wealth Recovery Solutions, a UK-based specialist investment fraud firm, will handle De Sollier's case as an Australian whose funds were transferred to a cryptocurrency exchange to become a member of HyperFund (the scheme was later renamed HyperVerse).
He joins more than 100 people across the UK who are planning to take legal action to recover the funds. WRS said it had successfully settled five HyperVerse cases in the past month, costing an average of £40,000 (A$77,163).
It said it had another 6 million pounds (S$11.6 million) in active receivables.
The move comes after the company this month settled a $1 million lawsuit against National Australia Bank over losses from another unrelated investment scheme.
An investigation by Guardian Australia revealed massive losses in the HyperVerse scheme, launched in December 2021 in an online promotional video featuring fake CEO Stephen Rhys Lewis, as well as appearances by Australian blockchain engineer Sam Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu.
Lee was recently charged with conspiracy to defraud in the United States for his alleged role in HyperVerse, described in court documents as a "pyramid and Ponzi scheme" that allegedly defrauded investors of $1.89 billion ($2.86 billion dollars).
Attorney Josh Chin said WRS traced the funds to HyperVerse and a related exchange, HOO.com. A group of HyperVerse accounts revealed they received almost US$300 million ($458) from the Tron exchange alone, 96% of which was sent to HOO.com. The company says it has tracked at least $2.7 billion sent to HOO.com, which it says has ties to "50 to 100 known fraud organizations."
HOO.com, as the Hyper Optimum Organization was known, collapsed in 2022. Guardian Australia was unable to send questions to HOO.com as the website no longer exists.
Chin said cryptocurrency detection efforts are needed to prove to banks that customers have been defrauded.
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"First, we have to clear the hurdle of proving it's a hoax," Chin told Guardian Australia. “When it comes to [alleged] cryptocurrency fraud, we basically have to prove that the [alleged] victim no longer has the funds, so we have in-house technology that we can use to track the cryptocurrency.
"We went public to clear the first hurdle, to show that this was a scam, what was going on, and what the victims thought was a real investment."
Chin said banks are required by their registered code of conduct to detect unusual activity among customers, which must take protective measures to prevent customers from losing funds.
This will form the basis of a complaint against the bank, which can be resolved by contacting the financial ombudsman without the need for legal proceedings, which are complicated, expensive and complicated. Even if the class action is successful, he said, the court order is unlikely to result in a refund.
"You can have a piece of paper in court that says, 'yes, it's your money, you've proven it's yours,' but at the end of the day, the third party, the exchange, doesn't own that money." turn to them, essentially a worthless piece of paper, you have.
De Sollier said he was glad he was able to try to recover the lost funds.
"Listen, either it will work or it won't," he said. “Yeah, if I could get my money back that would be great. But if I don't have it, I have to learn to live with it."
More importantly, he hopes that Li and Xu will take responsibility for the losses.
"I have to say, that's one of the things that really interests me ... the whole concept of justice and the people involved in this project need to be held accountable, and they really care."
Lee denied being behind HyperVerse and said his involvement was limited to providing technology and managing the organization's funds.
He did not respond to Guardian Australia's questions before publishing an earlier article about his involvement in the founding and operation of HyperFund and HyperVerse, but has previously denied the scheme was a fraud.
In a WhatsApp message after the article was published, he said he had made a "mistake" regarding his role in launching the Hyper scheme, but did not answer a question about what his mistake was. He also stated that "people keep making stuff up on the internet."
Guardian Australia was unable to contact Sue for comment.