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CASE FILE · ICT-2026-0401 · AI-Token Presale Rug-Pull

AlphaTick: A Sold-Out "AI Trading" Token That Drained Its Own Liquidity

AlphaTick marketed itself as an AI-driven trading protocol with a token presale and a polished launchpad. A Manchester developer put in 13.4 ETH. The token listed, ran for forty minutes, and the team pulled the pool. We traced the proceeds across two bridges before they reached a mixer.

Recovery Report
Vector
AI-Token Presale Rug-Pull
Instrument
ETH + USDC (Ethereum, Arbitrum)
Reported loss
£52,800
Case opened
February 2026
Funds recovered
31% (£16,400)
Claimant
Software developer, Manchester UK

Operator on file AlphaTick — read the full IntelliCtech scam-broker dossier.

01How AlphaTick built the trap

AlphaTick presented a clean whitepaper, an "AI trading engine" demo, and a presale hosted on a launchpad it controlled. The claimant found it through a paid post in a developer forum that linked to an audit badge belonging to a firm with no verifiable track record. The presale page showed a live "raised" counter and a per-wallet cap to manufacture scarcity.

He contributed across two transactions and received AlphaTick tokens under a vesting contract that, critically, only the deployer could modify. The site claimed liquidity was "locked," but there was no lock you could independently verify against the LP token on-chain.

02Where it broke

AlphaTick listed on a decentralized exchange with a thin, seeded pool. For roughly forty minutes the price rose and the project Telegram filled with celebration. Then the deployer called the liquidity-removal function, swapped the paired ETH out, and disabled transfers through an owner-only switch the website had insisted did not exist.

Our on-chain review showed the textbook rug signature: unlocked LP behind a "locked" claim, an owner-only trading toggle, and a renounce that had never actually happened. The pulled ETH bridged to Arbitrum, split across nine wallets, reconsolidated, and entered a mixing service.

I read the contract. I just did not grasp that "ownership renounced" on the website meant nothing when the deployed bytecode still had an owner.

03How we recovered part of it

  1. 01
    Reconstructed the flow. We mapped the deployer address, the liquidity-removal transaction and the nine-wallet split into a timestamped graph the claimant filed with Action Fraud and his exchange.
  2. 02
    Tagged the off-ramps. Two of the split wallets cashed out at a centralized exchange before the mixer. We identified the deposit addresses and the platform operating them.
  3. 03
    Filed the freeze request. Through that exchange’s law-enforcement portal, with the claimant’s crime reference, we requested a hold on the two flagged deposit accounts.
  4. 04
    Documented the pre-mixer trail. For the mixed funds we produced a probabilistic trace up to the mixer entry, supporting an insurance and tax-loss claim.
  5. 05
    Saw the claim through. The frozen balance on the two accounts was returned after a multi-week review; the mixed remainder was written off with full documentation.
Funds recovered31%

£16,400 of £52,800 returned from the two off-ramped wallets. The portion routed through a mixer was unrecoverable but fully documented for tax and insurance.

04Warning signs we flagged

  • A "locked liquidity" claim with no on-chain lock you can verify yourself on the LP token.
  • A contract that says ownership is renounced while still exposing owner-only functions on-chain.
  • An "AI trading" narrative used to justify a token with no working product.
  • A per-wallet cap and a live "raised" counter engineered purely for urgency.
  • Vesting controlled entirely by the deployer, with no third-party escrow.

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