Key Takeaways:
- A crypto rug pull investigator has revealed a possible pump and dump scheme involving PAAL AI
- According to ZachXBT, popular influencer TraderSZ used social media to push up the price of the token.
- He then dumped the PAAL AI tokens he held in the open market
YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) — According to reports circulating in social media platform X (formerly Twitter), there is a manhunt ongoing in the UK for crypto influencer TraderSz. He allegedly came under the scanner after blockchain fraud investigator ZachXBT exposed him for offloading crypto tokens on his followers. In particular, the case in question refers to the PAAL AI token.
In the meantime, the accused cryptocurrency trader has denounced the allegations. In a long thread, he has denied the accusations, giving his version of the story.
ZachXBT exposes TraderSZ
In a series of posts made on September 11, self-styled cryptocurrency fraud detective ZachXBT made startling claims about prominent traders. One is TraderSZ, while the other is TraderNJ and PetaByte.
ZachXBT said these traders allegedly participated in a pump-and-dump scheme involving the Ethereum token PAAL AI. As per the damning allegations, they aimed to profit at the expense of their loyal followers.
To back the allegations, ZachXBT shared a diagram on social media outlining a web of transactions between various cryptocurrency wallets. Notably, he pointed out that shortly after receiving a substantial amount of PAAL tokens from the project, Trader SZ began vigorously promoting the token across social media platforms.
“Trader SZ received 4M PAAL from their team on Aug 10 and began shilling a few days after. Shortly after that was when he began dumping. In total I found… SZ dumped $130k+ worth of PAAL (all of his tokens),”
he wrote.
Suspiciously, the timing of these activities coincided with a significant surge in PAAL AI’s price. Between August 1 and September 1, the token’s price surged from $0.009 to $0.045 on September 9.
While writing, PAAL AI exchanges hands at $0.02616. This is around 50% below its all-time high of $0.04854.
The crypto rug pull investigator discovered the identity of TraderSZ through the NFTs the wallet had received. These nonfungible tokens were widely known to belong to him.
In addition to the posts, ZachXBT unveiled a series of Telegram messages as evidence of collusion among the accused traders.
TraderSz denies pump and dump allegations
TraderSZ denied the allegations in several posts that he was involved in a pump and dump-scheme. According to him, one of the developers of PAAL AI approached him on Telegram and offered him to become an advisor in the project.
In return, he received a certain percentage of tokens. They had agreed that the PAAL AI team would officially announce his onboarding.
However, when the announcement did not follow despite his consistent efforts, he decided to sell his PAAL Tokens. He said he had no intention of influencing people to buy the token.
“As far as publicly, I never once instructed anyone to buy $PAAL. I had spoken about it a few times on my feed in a very tongue in cheek way and had replied and liked tweets of others who were seemingly invested into it but I never once encouraged anyone to purchase anything,”
he wrote.
However, according to ZachXBT, he had already shared about the token and continued to do so even after selling his stash. Moreover, he bought back some of the tokens once his alleged plot was discovered.
The development, if true, highlights that crypto pump and rump schemes are not a thing of the past. Popular crypto influencers who hold mass following use their popularity to pump up the price of projects so they can personally benefit from it. As the matter develops, one has to wait to see where the price of PAAL AI goes from here.
