Local authorities arrested WhiteRock founder Ildar Ilham in the UAE today for alleged involvement in the ZKasino rug pull. It plans to extradite him to the Netherlands, where other ZKasino leaders are on trial.
WHITE has fallen more than 30% in accordance with news of the arrest. The community is calling on exchanges like MEXC and Gate.io to delist the token.
ZKasino Fall Out Continues After a Year
ZKasino, a famous rug pull scam, led to millions of losses for its users and a string of subsequent investigations. Last month, crypto sleuth ZachXBT made serious allegations about WhiteRock (WHITE), claiming blockchain data linked it to ZKasino.
Today, it looks like these claims had weight, as local authorities arrested WhiteRock founder Ildar Ilham in the UAE:
“The authorities of the UAE have informed the Netherlands that they have arrested a suspect in the context of an ongoing criminal investigation. The man was wanted internationally for involvement in large-scale fraud surrounding the alleged gambling platform ZKasino,” the local authorities’ press release claimed.
The UAE will also extradite Ilham to the Netherlands to face fraud charges. The country is already prosecuting key ZKasino members, so it makes sense to move WhiteRock’s founder to this jurisdiction.
As of yet, authorities haven’t unveiled any new criminal evidence, but the suspicious on-chain connections between these companies were evidently revealing.
Now that explicit ties between WhiteRock and ZKasino are coming to light, the community is redoubling its efforts to delist WHITE.
Several prominent exchanges, such as MEXC and Gate.io, drew a lot of flak for listing it in the first place. None of these exchanges have made any announcements yet, but WHITE still dropped over 30%:
WhiteRock (WHITE) Price Performance. Source: CoinGecko
Ultimately, the opaque nature of this whole situation between ZKasino and WhiteRock has led to confusion and speculation. It’s unclear what exactly prompted the UAE to arrest Ilham, like if there’s new off-chain evidence directly connecting him to the rug pull.
Hopefully, upcoming criminal proceedings in the Netherlands will help fully elucidate these connections.
