Here’s an interesting story. In 2017, three young men founded a cryptocurrency company called Centra Tech. At the core of what this company was purportedly offering the world was a new cryptocurrency token called the Centra token (or CTR token) which, like Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies, was expected to grow exponentially in value.

Linked to the CTR token was the Centra Card which the founders marketed as having the functionality of a debit card that holders of cryptocurrency could use to spend their crypto in the real world, in real time. Sounds promising? Well, promises, false representations and flat-out lies turned out to be the primary tool used by the three business partners to lure in thousands of clients who wanted to cash in on the cryptocurrency boom at the time.

Over the time that these young men built a massive customer base, they piled lies on top of lies to make their phony business model appear credible. For one, they marketed themselves as having a CEO by the name of Michael Edwards, who had an MBA from Harvard and over 20 years of experience across highly reputable US banks. No such individual existed. They also lied about having partnerships with Visa and MasterCard that would enable the Centra Card to work in the way they described. And, of course, they marketed themselves as being licensed in several states in which they had no licence.