• The BBC has pulled a documentary about a 20-year-old who claimed to have turned $50 to $8 million in one year by investing in crypto.
• This was after local paper The Guardian poked holes at the story, including linking the young man to a crypto project that many claimed had been a scam.

Hanad Hasan was bound to be the star of an upcoming documentary about his rags-to-riches crypto story on the BBC. The 20-year-old had purportedly turned an investment of $50 into an $8 million fortune in just one year. His story sounded too good to be true, and as one newspaper found, it might well have been.

The BBC program was titled ‘The Crypto Millionaire’ and it was set to air this week. It told the story of a teenager from Birmingham in the U.K  who had gone through a rough childhood but found success through crypto. Hassan had been born in Somalia and migrated to the U.K when he was 14. In early 2021, he was working two jobs to aid his family.

He then heard about crypto and invested $50 in crypto early last year. This crypto, whose name he declined to reveal, shot up 10 times in just three days and he now had $500. Two days later, it had shot up tenfold and his investment was worth $5,000, he told the BBC in an article that the media house has since then taken down (but you can find the archived version here).

Within three months, Hasan’s investment was up to $1 million, striking gold with every token he picked. It was then that he decided to quit college and focus on trading crypto full time.

Hasan told the BBC that he had then founded his own cryptocurrency whose focus was on charity. By early February, this project had raised $270,000 for charitable causes, including donating loads of cash to food banks in his hometown of Birmingham.

Related: Meet the oil and gas veteran who quit his job to trade crypto full-time, his portfolio is up 1650%

The crypto millionaire – too good to be true?

But was the rags-to-riches story too good to be true? Had Hasan left out some details deliberately, knowing they would have painted him in a bad light?

The Guardian, A British newspaper, thinks so. Just days after BBC published the Hasan story and announced the documentary, The Guardian reached out with its concerns about the Hasan story.

For one, the paper questioned whether the BBC had checked the claimed financial returns in which Hasan’s tokens were shooting up 10x every three days. The BBC apparently hadn’t checked the validity of the financial information as even the tokens Hasan invested in were undisclosed.

The biggest issue, however, was the crypto project Hasan had launched. Known as Orfano, it was touted to be a charity project. It shut down abruptly in October and many investors who had put their money in it claimed to have been defrauded.

“The BBC swiftly said it had withdrawn the show but did not make any further comment on its editorial checks,” Guardian reported.

Orfano had launched in April and only existed for six months. On Reddit, Hasan and his fellow co-founder claimed they had tried to make it work but had failed, stating:

Things haven’t gone the way we had planned and after careful consideration we have decided that we will [be]stopping the continuing of the project. The team have put in every effort to maintain and grow the token but we don’t see any progress and a way to bring Orfano x back to the good days.