"From what we have seen, the number of investors is quite high," she says. "In Indonesia, for example, they [iEarn Bot] claim they had 800,000 customers." "At first the app works very well," says Ms Tabusca.
"When they have enough investors and enough money invested in a specific country, they don't allow that country to withdraw any more - and they open other countries." iEarn Bot presents itself as a US-based company with excellent credentials, but when the BBC fact-checked some information on its website, it raised some red flags. The man whom the site names as the company's founder told us he had never heard of them. He said he has made a complaint to the police. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alongside companies such as Huawei and Qualcomm, are all named as "strategic partners" of iEarn Bot, but they too said they have no knowledge of the company and they are not working with it. On the website, the company does not provide any contact information. When the BBC checked the history of its Facebook page, we learned that until the end of 2021, the account was advertising weight-loss products. It is managed from Vietnam and Cambodia.
iEarn Bot places a big emphasis on pushing investors to recruit more people to join the app. "The way people in this company operate is more similar to a Ponzi scheme, than an actual business," says Ms Tabusca. The BBC has also seen chat conversations where people, who claim to be from iEarn Bot's customer service, told investors that in order to withdraw their money, they must pay a 30% fee. "Some people were quite desperate to get their money back, so they paid the fee - but they still couldn't withdraw," says Ms Tabusca.
www.bbc.com
