jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Unfortunately I fell victim to an online crypto investing scam and I'm usually very careful with things like this. I have a considerable amount of money being held hostage. I already filed reports with the FBI and SEC. Here's the story:
I was first contacted by a person named Xinyue Chen on LinkedIn on June 26, 2025. We chatted for a while, then within a few days started chatting by email. On June 28 we moved our conversations to Google Chat. On July 15 we began chatting on WhatsApp. We talked about many subjects, including investing. She was doing short-term trading with her uncle, Chen Zhiwen, and making 10% to 15% on each trade. She showed me the trading records.
She asked her uncle if I could invest with him. He said yes and I started chatting with himon WhatsApp. She helped me open accounts on Coinbase and Cointree. The latter is the investment platform her uncle used. She lent me $5,000 to practice trading, and I did several trades. I put more money into the account with several deposits as I got more comfortable trading. These were free trades but eventually I would have to pay 30% of myprofits as commission. I thought I could start officially trading with the amount I hadinvested ($75,000) but her uncle required a $300,000 minimum. I didn't have the liquid assets to invest that much, nor did I feel comfortable doing so. I invested another $47,500, and she loaned me $171,000 to bring my account to over $300,000. I started trading with her uncle officially on September 11, 2025.
The first month of trading went extremely well. We did six trades and my account balance grew to nearly $1 million. The seventh trade was a sabotage in retrospect. On October 7 her uncle had me invest $950,000 of my account funds into a so-called delivery contact.This gives a fixed profit or loss depending upon if you choose the correct direction a cryptocurrency will move in for various periods of time. This was a 7-day contract with a 100% profit. Several days later her uncle gave me the bad news that the price was going in the wrong direction, and I needed to add about $310,000 to my account to save the trade before it closed on October 14. Of course I didn't have this money, so he helped me get an interest-free loan from the platform. The loan could only be repaid with external funds, and withdrawals would be locked until I repaid the loan.
Xinyue lent me $100,000, and I did a $135,000 60-day IRA rollover. I had no more funds I could spare after that. After Xinyue's and my deposits there was no indication these funds were applied to the loan. There also weren't any trades after the seventh one. I contacted customer service to ask that these deposits be applied to my loan, and to ask if my remaining balance could be paid with the funds from my investment account. I never received any answers. My Cointree account currently shows a balance of $2,482,834.86. That total includes the $310,000 Cointree loan and the last two deposits. I cannot make withdrawals at all. I tried several times.
Her uncle disappeared, and Xinyue was mostly unavailable for the last 2 weeks. She claimed to be on a business trip in Singapore as of December 2, 2025. That was my last contact with her. I saved all my chats and emails with both her and her uncle as evidence in case anything went wrong. I also found out the investment platform they're using is a fake Cointree site. The address is https://www.cointreeoi.com/syn/#/my/index. The address of the official Cointree site is http://cointree.com/.
While I can still access my "Cointree" account the funds in it are inaccessible, and at this point I consider the incident a scam. Also note I need $135,000 by January to avoid paying taxes on my IRA rollover.
There was a previous settled SEC case about Chen Zhiwen, his niece Jie Chen, and his Cointree site where they were found to have run a fraudulent scheme. I wasn't aware of this until recently.
Interestingly while this incident appears to be a scam there is in fact over $600,000 in cryptocurrency at my "Cointree" receiving address:
etherscan.io
I'm asking two things. First, spread information about what happened far and wide on any sites you frequent to warn others. If they reeled me in then they can get almost anyone. Second, I think if the permissions on the site can be changed, I might be able to withdraw at least some of my money. If I can get back the ~$260K I put in I'll be happy. If I can get more even better.
The site is cointreeoi.com
If anyone here has the ability to hack into it and help I'll offer a percentage of the funds I recover as a reward. I tried but I got nowhere.
Last thing. Here are pictures of the two who scammed me. Spread these all over the Internet. Maybe someone else they scammed will see them on the street and take them out.
I was first contacted by a person named Xinyue Chen on LinkedIn on June 26, 2025. We chatted for a while, then within a few days started chatting by email. On June 28 we moved our conversations to Google Chat. On July 15 we began chatting on WhatsApp. We talked about many subjects, including investing. She was doing short-term trading with her uncle, Chen Zhiwen, and making 10% to 15% on each trade. She showed me the trading records.
She asked her uncle if I could invest with him. He said yes and I started chatting with himon WhatsApp. She helped me open accounts on Coinbase and Cointree. The latter is the investment platform her uncle used. She lent me $5,000 to practice trading, and I did several trades. I put more money into the account with several deposits as I got more comfortable trading. These were free trades but eventually I would have to pay 30% of myprofits as commission. I thought I could start officially trading with the amount I hadinvested ($75,000) but her uncle required a $300,000 minimum. I didn't have the liquid assets to invest that much, nor did I feel comfortable doing so. I invested another $47,500, and she loaned me $171,000 to bring my account to over $300,000. I started trading with her uncle officially on September 11, 2025.
The first month of trading went extremely well. We did six trades and my account balance grew to nearly $1 million. The seventh trade was a sabotage in retrospect. On October 7 her uncle had me invest $950,000 of my account funds into a so-called delivery contact.This gives a fixed profit or loss depending upon if you choose the correct direction a cryptocurrency will move in for various periods of time. This was a 7-day contract with a 100% profit. Several days later her uncle gave me the bad news that the price was going in the wrong direction, and I needed to add about $310,000 to my account to save the trade before it closed on October 14. Of course I didn't have this money, so he helped me get an interest-free loan from the platform. The loan could only be repaid with external funds, and withdrawals would be locked until I repaid the loan.
Xinyue lent me $100,000, and I did a $135,000 60-day IRA rollover. I had no more funds I could spare after that. After Xinyue's and my deposits there was no indication these funds were applied to the loan. There also weren't any trades after the seventh one. I contacted customer service to ask that these deposits be applied to my loan, and to ask if my remaining balance could be paid with the funds from my investment account. I never received any answers. My Cointree account currently shows a balance of $2,482,834.86. That total includes the $310,000 Cointree loan and the last two deposits. I cannot make withdrawals at all. I tried several times.
Her uncle disappeared, and Xinyue was mostly unavailable for the last 2 weeks. She claimed to be on a business trip in Singapore as of December 2, 2025. That was my last contact with her. I saved all my chats and emails with both her and her uncle as evidence in case anything went wrong. I also found out the investment platform they're using is a fake Cointree site. The address is https://www.cointreeoi.com/syn/#/my/index. The address of the official Cointree site is http://cointree.com/.
While I can still access my "Cointree" account the funds in it are inaccessible, and at this point I consider the incident a scam. Also note I need $135,000 by January to avoid paying taxes on my IRA rollover.
There was a previous settled SEC case about Chen Zhiwen, his niece Jie Chen, and his Cointree site where they were found to have run a fraudulent scheme. I wasn't aware of this until recently.
Interestingly while this incident appears to be a scam there is in fact over $600,000 in cryptocurrency at my "Cointree" receiving address:
Address: 0x71d764F9...f226e22c4 | Etherscan
Address (EOA) | Balance: $640,763.85 across 2 Chains | Transactions: 26 | As at Dec-11-2025 09:12:52 PM (UTC)
etherscan.io
I'm asking two things. First, spread information about what happened far and wide on any sites you frequent to warn others. If they reeled me in then they can get almost anyone. Second, I think if the permissions on the site can be changed, I might be able to withdraw at least some of my money. If I can get back the ~$260K I put in I'll be happy. If I can get more even better.
The site is cointreeoi.com
If anyone here has the ability to hack into it and help I'll offer a percentage of the funds I recover as a reward. I tried but I got nowhere.
Last thing. Here are pictures of the two who scammed me. Spread these all over the Internet. Maybe someone else they scammed will see them on the street and take them out.