29 people believed to be the heads of the Hoggpool cryptocurrency investment scam were recently detained by Egyptian police. According to reports, during the arrests, the police reportedly said as many as 95 phones and 3,367 SIM cards were seized. Domestic and foreign currency worth $194,000 was also recovered.

The alleged masterminds behind the cryptocurrency mining app fraud used a total of 88 digital currency wallets to receive money from investors, according to a CBS News report derived from a statement released by authorities. Once the funds were received, the criminal gang then proceeded to redistribute these between 9,965 digital wallets. The funds were later converted to BTC before being spirited out of the country.

While the police statement claimed that Hoggpool scammers had duped investors out of as much as $615,000, many in Egypt insist that the figure is much higher. Abdulaziz Hussein, a lawyer representing over a thousand victims from Cairo alone, is quoted in the report suggesting that as many as 800,000 people may have fallen for the scam.

Although the use or trading of cryptocurrency is forbidden in Egypt, the Hoggpool scam masterminds were reportedly able to lure victims by promising an unrealistically high return on investment. According to CBS news, prospective investors were offered investment options that ranged from one with an initial outlay of $10 and a daily payout of $1, to one where the investor pays $800 to acquire a mining machine that pays out $55 per day.

The alleged con artists are charged with utilizing falsified documents in addition to assurances of a high return on investment to entice naive victims. One example of such a document is the purported certificate of the fact of good standing that Hoggpool allegedly received from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.