An Italian cryptocurrency exchange that claimed to have been hacked may have actually been a con called an exit scam, according to the latest reports.

The drama started Friday when Bitgrail S.r.l. claimed that they had “lost” 17 million Nano, a fairly obscure cryptocurrency previously known as “Raiblocks” worth approximately $170 million in what it claimed was “unauthorized access” of their service. The hack on only the exchange’s Nano holdings did raise some flags, although cryptocurrency exchange hacks usually result in a specific one being targeted and rarely involve multiple coins and tokens.

Further investigation found that at least some of the funds were transferred in October last year. That means that the theft was not recent. Forbes reported that further suspicion that the company may be preparing for an exit scam occurred in January, when it “halted all withdrawals and deposits of Nano, as well as the Lisk and CryptoForecast tokens.” That was followed by an announcement that the exchange “would enforce identity verification and anti-money laundering protocols for its users, and potentially block non-European users.”

Complicating matters further, Bitgrail asked for the Nano development team to adjust the Nano ledger to account for the loss of coins. That’s something the Nano team is not willing to do, resulting in their suggesting that the company is not being honest with them.

“We now have sufficient reason to believe that [Bitgrail owner Francesco] Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time,” the Nano team wrote in a Medium post Friday.

Firano denied the allegations, writing on Twitter that “in the wake of the unfounded accusations made against me by the [Nano] dev team and of the dissemination of private conversations that compromise police investigations, Bitgrail s.r.l. is forced to contact the police in order to protect its rights and users.”

Whatever the reason behind the loss of the cryptocurrency, Bitgrail will be either one of the biggest cryptocurrency hacks of all time or one of the biggest exit scams. Japanese exchange Coincheck Inc. holds the record for the largest hack, having lost $400 million in NEM tokens in January. Prior to that, Mt. Gox was the previous record holder, losing about $387 million in bitcoin back in 2014, although many suspect that was actually an exit scam as well.

In a related case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shut down an allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering called AriseBank that had raised $600 million from investors Jan. 30.

Image: Bitgrail