The Netherlands arrests a suspect in the ZKasino scam and seizes assets worth more than 11.4 million euros

On April 29, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigations Office (FIOD) arrested a 26-year-old man on suspicion of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. The investigation focused on a large-scale scam on the gambling platform ZKasino, where victims around the world invested more than $30 million in cryptocurrencies. Dutch authorities seized more than €11.4 million (about $12.2 million) worth of cryptocurrencies, real estate and luxury cars. The criminal investigation began on April 25 and is still ongoing, with the suspect's detention extended for 14 days. During the investigation, the FIOD worked closely with the Financial Crime Compliance and Investigations team of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, helping to protect millions of euros in cryptocurrency. Over the past few days, the FIOD's investigation team has been working with the Public Prosecution Service on digital finance investigations. In the process, they managed to get in touch with people involved in this scam and asked for their cooperation in returning the victims' funds; more arrests are not ruled out. Earlier news, investors created the Telegram group "ZKasino Legal Task Force" to sue the co-founder of ZKasino for allegedly misappropriating nearly $33 million in Ethereum from users to exchange for its native tokens and then lost contact. The dispute began on March 23, when ZigZag Exchange founder Kedar Iyer published an article on the X platform, saying that ZKasino co-founder Monke used ZigZag's funds to start ZKasino. BlackDragon revealed in an April 23 article that they had planned to invest in ZKasino. However, BlackDragon's due diligence team said that the investment was not approved because ZKasino team members reacted poorly to revealing their identities. In addition, user Cygaar pointed out that ZKasino's blockchain technology did not match its publicity and was only a fast-build version based on Arbitrum Nitro. At present, the issuance of ZKAS tokens is still unclear, and investors who purchased ZKAS during the pre-sale have not received their tokens.