by Rushali 
“Scam” a word of western origin made famous in India by the well-known Harshad Mehta story narrated and covered by Sucheta Dalal. We have seen scams and frauds covered by mainstream media outlets such as the 1992 Scam, The Vijay Mallya scam, the Nirav Modi scam and the list can go on forever.
Ironically the cryptocurrency space being a much more secure alternative of the native and more mainstream fiat currency can be used by people to complete their ulterior motives too, surprising, isn’t it? It is not always a bad decision to regulate markets such as the crypto market after we come across some stories like the one, I will be covering here today. Surely you might have come across terms like airdrops, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes that promise to reward you with cryptocurrencies on completing some tasks or getting your friends to sign up and get some funds deposited. These types of schemes are not new and also happens to be infecting the Crypto space Aswell, one such story being the story of “Morris coin”
Let’s start with digging a bit deeper and getting to know the origin of this so-called cryptocurrency ‘coined’ as pun intended “The Morris coin”
Originated in India, this is what the exceptionally well-designed website of this coin has to say about it. The website is so well designed that it is almost impossible for an average person to not get distracted by the glimmer it has to offer.
According to the creators “The Morris Coin is a multifunctional, next-generation cryptocurrency form being developed on Blockchain, using cutting edge smart technology. The Morris Coin will be the first stable digital currency exclusively designed and marketed towards an Ecommerce and Trading Industry to pay for product and services and freedom from dealing with a traditional business.” seems legit right?
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This is not all, for elaborating the scam to make people believe they have added tons of unverifiable information on the website by using technical jargons like blockchain, cutting edge, stable, super-secure etcetera. The scam started as an ICO scam, ICO stands for initial coin offering and works almost like an IPO system in the stock market which stands for the initial public offering of shares to people before getting listed on any stock exchange.
So, the marketing department behind the coin started circulating screenshots of a cryptocurrency known as MRC which is, mind it not “Morris coin” it stands for Micro coin which is already a listed crypto token on different crypto exchanges. The scammers behind this coin stated and asked from the investors in this case the “common average people” 15000 INR in return promising them 30-40% returns, the exact numbers are not clear.
If you have not even heard of this scam or the so-called “Morris coin” then consider yourself lucky because before getting busted they had already gotten money from close to eleven lakh people from India itself by just promising them these too good to be true returns and by giving out fake information of the ICO soon getting listed in reupdated global crypto exchanges.
You can also go on to YouTube and search for “Morris coin” and you will be directed to the official YouTube channel of the scammers giving out the same claims of huge ICO offering and promises of getting listed on crypto exchanges all over the world. The YouTube channel and the website still exist. After cheating 11lakh people of India the whole scam got busted and the Person behind it got arrested by the police in October 2020 putting an end to the Morris coin scam.
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They used the hype created by bitcoin to lure in investors hard-earned money in the Ponzi schemes and looted innocent people. When I come to think of such incidents it doesn’t seem to be a bad idea if the regulation comes from the government in a much-sophisticated manner instead of just straight away banning them, but the regulation seems necessary.
There are numerous Crypto scams waiting to trap innocent people like the exit scam, exploding airdrops, pump and dump, phishing traps and the list goes on and on. It is not surprising at all and shouldn’t be for you too to also witness the darker side of the crypto space, especially when you know the origin of bitcoin came from the darker side of the web if you know what I mean.
How to save yourself from these types of scams? I am leaving the measures to be discussed in another different article. For some legit airdrops and to educate yourself about different crypto coins you can refer to many different sources available on the internet.
For now, I would just say “STAY AWAY FROM PYRAMID SCHEMES”.
