Three Brazilian footballers have allegedly been scammed by XLAND, a crypto platform dubbed as the first earth digital twin meta-universe virtual world. 

The 3 footballers, Gustavo Scarpa, Mayke Rocha de Oliveira, and Willian Bigode, who lost over $5 million are said to have been victims of a pyramid scheme. However, XLAND denies this and has vowed to compensate them. Still, the players have filed complaints with the police. 

Sources say that the platform had previously promised its investors returns of up to 5% a month, but instead of multiplying the players’  money, it depleted it. 

Frustrated, Scarpa commented that he felt it was just stupid people who fell for schemes and scams like this and was pretty upset that he was a victim of one right now. 

There are lots of crypto scammers in the Web3 world.
Crypto scammers are using different techniques, like rug pull and phishing.

It is alleged that Mayke who plays for Palmeiras and Gustavo Scarpa, an attacking midfielder at Nottingham Forest, were persuaded by Bigode who is currently on loan to Atletico Paranaense to invest in XLAND. However, Bigode taking to his Instagram page denied persuading his colleagues to invest and argues that he is also a victim.

According to the reports, Mayke invested about $757,000, Scarpa invested $1.2 million, and Bigode invested about $3.2 million. Shortly after Palmeiras won the league in November, Scarpa and Mayke filed a complaint with the police. Vinicius Salva, the lead investigator, revealed there was strong evidence that pointed to a scam and a pyramid scheme in an interview with TV Globo. 

Final Words

Since the advent of altcoins, crypto scams have become increasingly common. With NFTs, things have just gotten worse too – especially with the tremendous success the industry has faced in recent years. These scams include but are not limited to investment scams, pyramid schemes, phishing, and scams requesting private keys for an upgrade or requiring newbies to transfer coins for some sort of doubling (or “mining”).

The details of the investigation into the Brazilian footballers’ ordeal with XLAND are still sketchy at this point, but we’ll bring you word as soon as we hear more – stay tuned!