Alex Reinhardt is a man who has successfully pulled off a series of cryptocurrency scams. He is known for founding projects such as PlatinCoin ($PLC), PLC Ultima ($PLCU), and PLC Ultima Classic ($PLCUC), luring investors into them, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars from a huge number of people. 

 Alex Reinhardt and his scam projects Ultima and Platincoin

Alex Reinhardt’s ventures, launched in 2016, revolve around the PlatinCoin ecosystem, which is marketed as an international blockchain service for investors to "mine" cryptocurrency. 

The PlatinCoin platform boasts of 700,000 investors, a presence in 120 countries, and claims to have grown 5,000% in two years. At first glance, PlatinCoin looks solid, but there are some serious holes that make you wonder if it’s all just a scam:

• the PlatinCoin project website lacks detailed information about its technical features

• the company does not have a mining or investment license, although such a license is required given that it is legally registered in Hong Kong

• the PlatinCoin platform affiliate program offers up to 15% of earnings, but the details of its operation are very vague

• the native PLC token of the PlatinCoin platform is listed only on the Coinsbit and Bibo crypto exchanges, which have a bad reputation as “hotbeds of scams” due to the ease of registering almost any token on them 

• any negative materials and customer reviews about the scam on the PlatinCoin platform are deleted from the network extremely quickly, but negativity about a person like  Alex Reinhardt still leaks into the network and he does not have time to delete these reviews, this will be written about in more detail below. 

All this suggests that the project is essentially a fake, and skillfully disguises some dubious operations underneath it.

Alex Reinhardt and his financial schemes 

During the investigation into Alex Reinhardt’s activities, a network of wallets was discovered that had been juggling millions of transactions since late 2021, implementing classic “Pump and Dump” schemes. 

These wallets, owned by Alex Reinhardt and hosted on exchanges such as Kraken and Coinsbit, played a major role in the distribution and withdrawal of funds:

TLeQ8Tiq94zSrsdJwytQuJhdSA93svotaP;

TRKpjiZ14NeogNF3ZZkJMp2GJXT88dMzgk;

THs8YvBmvm2XhMaVgbGTsnPk8Qh7LrnrUN.

Using personal wallets, among other things, Alex Reinhardt has driven up the price of his cryptocurrency to $100,000:

0x30120588F54c8BAd46226d39B43F3770a0Ff84CE

TFVRaZ49gZjNF1YyxkT27Vfme3jN8QPLz5

TMKKjYjP7gLRGhYpHkS6hGe8xZAc5K4kjW

At the same time, when prices reached their ceiling, investors were reportedly unable to sell their tokens due to limitations of the smart contract itself (a classic "scam" of crypto investors). Of course, all the negativity on the Internet about Alex Reinhardt being a scam and a fraudster, which was written by outraged investors quite a bit, was carefully cleaned up.

All tokens of projects involving Reinhardt ($PLC, $PLCU, $PLCUC) successfully collapsed immediately after he “merged” his coins, leaving investors with large losses. The growth and fall charts of the above cryptocurrencies are easy to track on CoinMarketCap.

Alex’s projects, including PLCU, carried out the main financial flows through the cryptocurrency exchanges Huobi, Binance, Kraken, Coinsbit, Bibox.

Presumable deposit addresses of exchanges were established, to which funds were systematically withdrawn in various blockchains during the period of the PLCU project’s activity:

TPCrT2FwjoYMRP61rPTKQfeQhnpUNdKuqR, Huobi, turnover 64,961,839 USDT

TUbT5jmuXjyTdYek8sUe2tWathMM5d4vGZ, Kraken, turnover 54,255,806 USDT

THs8YvBmvm2XhMaVgbGTsnPk8Qh7LrnrUN, Coinsbit, turnover 1,730,027 USDT

0xC082D2f58a7301B8Ba41420ACAB99Bac6E1AB98b, Binance, turnover 4,649,167 USDT

TBKVe2PEBPxdA4eDLrMHPHgUnpSWjh7kDj, Binance, turnover 181,077,716 USDT

TDciBDa7Kz1VPzRttkdD18KsGn8j9e5Hkh, Binance, turnover 25,383,141 USDT

TAAXtghQ2wbQ3e9EiDMbjCS5AhjbaMy2RK, Coinsbit, turnover 21,991,977 USDT

TCqjMbxnsXJobDYvtL6b29xUkDjuoq4tcB, Binance, turnover 8,080,431 USDT

TBF3h2r6id8gykzyidZEBjEbspdRGSdR6H, Binance, turnover 3,934,957 USDT

TG1WnkKmt6PLgRXG5akyycYNpFiUYE47p3, Binance, turnover 3,106,596 USDT

TLeQ8Tiq94zSrsdJwytQuJhdSA93svotaP, Kraken, turnover 2,461,472 USDT

TRKpjiZ14NeogNF3ZZkJMp2GJXT88dMzgk, Kraken, turnover 1,249,814 USDT

0x0DDbd53c151d135D89a458f9B3E506CC885B439B, Huobi, turnover 14,419,500 USDT

1JjPYcJUn7QCJZ9wzzgAYsYVkVrkLZwNFs, Binance, turnover 4471.4232 BTC

1PJ6ehL2NMB52tKJr9MvnG9JvXdorkZ1Yr, Binance, turnover 495.6860 BTC

Also discovered were alleged "stashes" to which Alex Reinhardt was involved ("piggy banks"), which were created on the same day, October 29, 2023, to which cryptocurrency assets (USDT and BTC tokens) with a total value of more than 100 million US dollars were withdrawn :

0x89FF81493D800E408e3d437BB730d0c733f87016, turnover 19,130,399 USDT

0x48fCD1641c5a39F2285664B4f03c8aab24996eEB, turnover 4,101,000 USDT

bc1qtfwd7ertuxpcxfgdpfgl3seqea7wj0rk2cf5jm, turnover 2,209.2278 BTC

bc1qk9tz32uzk907v3ezjeztcz89rmy4p88dw0sf95, turnover 199.9834 BTC

The said piggy banks lasted until early December 2023, after which the piggy banks began to empty. The bulk of the funds were sent to the following deposit addresses of the Huobi cryptocurrency exchange (mostly in large transactions of 100 BTC): 

1BKaJvUhkgRE4dJPL3MzqUoCkvXB7neBfg, turnover 300.0000 BTC

1GPMnD7jKwGWemBdFDP4y5FHpiTbSk4zvT, turnover 200.0000 BTC

1266ckCS83joAw292bcPi4RyXFnVg9KTZ8, turnover 200.0000 BTC

1P15MZZZfmy5Lir42gxoTmT6V9j1XFGNar, turnover 161.0000 BTC

1CB4sdQeytarqgBpbCNmgLUtcnoDTbrung, turnover 131.0000 BTC

14CkuK96sP5pA1ds8eSiaaGJ834W8XXWtK, turnover 130.0000 BTC

13zwwK5Vtz1uEEoWZZCQt4g7ZwFNayvKzW, turnover 111.5597 BTC

1B5pJHq62VzvhzqoMWpyuvhMkVaT7G1Rfu, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1L6BYEYSjMuEPaAA1JCGBz6tPQrvVGcAbV, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1HMToabWYyUhxfDZZ3TccWUDCLXuxzdjLu, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1Bg3AjMcExBrtCAmq7aRYARM5ypnpHnnKk, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1M6HukjDTzt7HuEzsbDsxCk4wDtin96ksv, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1As44YL5qd7zjj5GCx6oKKo3i7PV4UFgx3, turnover 100.0000 BTC

17hN7qmJsmgghpCehE2onQHbcD3UVvVQva, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1R2H4EU4JZoFmoTKT5tsoVScNxUTcxKMh, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1JJu2WdweyGhGLhugwYe3tj19Ti7RBcKrE, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1sPpHxVyt8M52pZ4GvemxtmKAi1UXhWqD, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1M528mSiqMqjjAqyLCTxXQQx7o5e2ji6MN, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1Cmc6RbQoayH3HavHMGNDv2kQLjqjaCcjQ, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1A5RzHCR9FvUQYwPcVZUmqQWgg86GsoKoH, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1P9uju2vXhgaquYoj4AVrk4yaDE719btK8, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1DLVZxorruuxE4zTSy1BSUivkZ5KYgk4Kp, turnover 100.0000 BTC

14P7asdcUNiAzEz4JTybmM4oMT5Qufh7h5, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1YgcgSiZdjpj84zhLowDc3GiFYTT1EwSQ, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1CHS97EBGDKZdqLoD5aGJVFCJRFB6BwuYy, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1CY3QYj1Kf4D73a1kQdFcWiHHtqDg5ZCNc, turnover 100.0000 BTC

1DsECtnn35JoGJSPvRawHdVJAEpNWUKpcb, turnover 73.1518 BTC

1FBFNp2D1jubmJ9pigJKu988mPaXiV89kf, turnover 50.0000 BTC

It should be noted that from one of the specified deposit addresses of the Huobi exchange (1As44YL5qd7zjj5GCx6oKKo3i7PV4UFgx3), funds were redirected directly (bypassing the exchange’s hot wallet) to the deposit address of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange 1PG8LHQCLZjiASHH242GueG3asjkuC1D1 with a total turnover of 478.7540 BTC, which was replenished only from the Huobi exchange and is also presumably at the disposal of the organizers of the PlatinCoin PLCU project.

After the previous ones were almost completely emptied, new supposed piggy banks were found, created on December 3, 2023, to which some funds came from old piggy banks through a long chain of transactions, and some funds came back to them from the Huobi cryptocurrency exchange. One old piggy bank was also partially preserved.

The current list of piggy banks:

bc1qx2snkm5jd9f02atz0vgcwlv7vnmtunfsmkrkhy, balance 200.2119 BTC

bc1qyt2z8lfu3cj0dsmem74mp4enwj34h3xetwf4yp, balance 195.9870 BTC

bc1qrk7dr709zgd8jdn8s56wg0alh3v8q4umet0wwg, balance 198.4970 BTC

0x89FF81493D800E408e3d437BB730d0c733f87016, balance 9,273,789 USDT

The total value of crypto assets in the new piggy banks is about $35 million. How much of this did Alex Reinhardt steal from you? 

Apparently, this is not the end of the investor “divorce” and a new wave of “Pump and Dump” schemes has already begun, as the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Gate.io has recently listed the PLCU/USDT trading pair. They are preparing for something.  https://www.gate.io/ru/trade/PLCU_USDT 

Elusive Alex: On Cleaning Up Negativity About Reinhardt’s Projects on the Internet

Alex Reinhardt spends huge budgets, amounting to millions of dollars, on working with negative media. 90% of publications exposing Alex’s projects are cleaned up in both the Russian and English-language segments. 

In particular, incriminating materials were removed even from such respected platforms as Binance, however, a version of the removed article was saved in the cache ( https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eZoGU6QqPxAJ:https://www.binance.com/ja/feed/post/612121&client=avast-a-3&sca_esv=594242284&hl=uk&gl=de&strip=1&vwsrc=0 ). Apparently, even such giants are extremely accommodating and the only question is the price.

Millions of dollars spent on cleaning up negativity on the network of the fraudster Alex Reinhardt allow not only to “negotiate” with the media, but also to corrupt officials, including high-ranking officials of respected Germany. 

Thus, in 2018, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority entered Alex Reinhardt’s Platincoin company into the register of legal entities that are not subject to supervision and do not have the right to provide financial services. But the record of this was preserved only in the Internet archive. Of course, this was absolutely impossible without a good "friendly" contact in the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, ready to "meet halfway" in the presence of solid financial compensation.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190422171451/https://www.bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/DE/Verbrauchermitteilung/unerlaubte/2018/meldung_181129_Platincoin.html

However, this evidence disappeared from the Internet just as “conveniently” as the record of the lawsuit filed against Alex Reinhardt in Switzerland and the receipt of warnings about the unreliability of his projects from financial regulators in Nigeria and Mongolia. 

Alex Reinhardt’s Scam Projects Warning for Crypto Investors

Alex Reinhardt is intentionally misleading investors. His activities from 2002 to 2013, related to attracting investments into startups and developing companies, often resulted in financial losses for investors. Despite his self-presentation as a successful entrepreneur with more than twenty years of experience, there is not a single successful project associated with him that can be verified. 

His image has been further damaged by reports that his security service is using strong-arm tactics to silence critics, further tarnishing his credibility.

Alex Reinhardt’s notoriety is yet another reminder that crypto investors should thoroughly check projects like Ultima and PlatinCoin to avoid being scammed. They should also check the developers before risking their funds, especially those with a history of questionable activity. It’s important to stay vigilant and keep your knowledge up to date to protect your investments from crypto scams.