Two administrators of an Over-the-counter (OTC) exchange platform have reportedly been charged with illegally raising Bitcoin by promising interest on return deposits, as part of a larger loan scheme.

According to the local media outlet Beijing News, around 20 OTC investors have jointly pressed a lawsuit against Yi Zhou and Xiang Li, who have successfully lured nearly 100 OTC traders into the scheme by promising them interest on their deposits, and ultimately scammed them more than $54.7 million worth of Bitcoin.

The investors only realized they have fallen victim to the 2 Chinese scammers when the interest – which would be in the Japanese currency Yen – had experienced several holdups and failed to make it to their accounts on the agreed time in April 2019.

Yi Zhou and Xiang Li have gradually built their good names in the market by running a chat room on the popular China-based social media application Wechat, which was widely used by investors to post OTC bids, as well as exchanging updated information of cryptocurrencies. This ultimately convinced the investors of the ability of the Chinese duo to sufficiently pay the interest.

According to the report, the Chinese police have opened an official criminal case against the two, who are currently in the authority’s custody. The investigator is trying to clarify the fact that whether Yi Zhou and Xiang Li actually operated an illegal loan scheme, or they were only fraudsters who caused serious financial damage to the OTC traders.