Just as Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, seemed to be navigating away from some of his most significant regulatory challenges, a new unexpected ghost from the past has come back to haunt him with sensational new claims. An individual identifying herself as “Ten Ten,” who claims to be the former girlfriend of Justin Sun, has published an extensive document accusing the cryptocurrency giant of conducting a large-scale pump and dump scheme through social media platform X. In a break from prior accusations of wash trading, Ten Ten stated that Justin Sun used the identities of real, living persons — specifically his own employees — to avoid restrictions placed on exchanges and take advantage of retail investors when he started building his initial wealth.
The allegations, which include a list of twelve specific individuals allegedly used as “human mules” for illegal trading, paint a picture of a systematic operation designed to siphon wealth from the public while discarding the workers who made it possible.
The “Human Bot” Network
For years, regulators and analysts have suspected that trading volumes on early crypto exchanges were inflated by bots. However, Ten Ten’s latest disclosure suggests a far more labor-intensive reality. In her lengthy post, she claimed that Sun did not rely solely on automated scripts but instead harvested the personal data of his subordinates.
“He didn’t use bots or fake users. He used real people,” she wrote. The whistleblower alleged that Sun coerced employees into handing over their government ID cards and phone numbers. These credentials were then used by an associate named Wang Bingyu to open verified accounts on the Binance exchange. Using active accounts, Sun is alleged to have used those accounts to conduct coordinated TRX (Tron’s native token) sell-offs – this created what appeared to be organic market activity, while simultaneously dumping millions of tokens onto unsuspecting buyers.
Ten Ten released a list of twelve individuals she claims were part of this operation, including Zhao Ling, Liu Jintong, Huang Kaijie, and others. She asserted that these were not phantom names but real staff members from mainland China who worked under Sun during the project’s infancy.
The “Pump and Dump” Influencer Economy
The allegations extend beyond internal manipulation to a broader ecosystem of paid deception. Ten Ten described a “coordinated” machine involving Chinese Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who were allegedly on Sun’s payroll.
According to her statement, these influencers were not offering independent analysis but were paid handsomely—up to 20,000 USDT per post—to issue “buy” signals at precise moments. The timing was reportedly synchronized with the internal trading teams’ plans to exit positions. “Once the pump ends, they disappear. Retail loses everything, and no one helps them,” she wrote. She characterized the strategy not as a vision for decentralized finance, but as a calculated mechanism where “project teams collaborated with capital pools” to harvest liquidity from retail traders.
Collateral Damage: The Fate of the Staff
The news that has stirred up a great deal of concern is how the workers whose names were stolen will be treated. Ten Ten asserts that multiple people referred to throughout her claim are currently facing severe legal repercussions due to their false identity causing by the thieves who created this information against her will. Some have been sentenced to prison for no reason at all.
The narrative provided suggests a ruthless disposability: employees provided the access required to cash out millions, only to be abandoned when their utility expired. “They gave him the access, helped him cash out, and then got discarded,” she alleged. This human cost adds a grim dimension to what has typically been viewed as a white-collar financial dispute.
A “Genius” Built on Smoke?
U.S. Political Figures and World Liberty Financial Is a Bad Combo
Ten Ten’s criticism targets the “boy genius” image created by Justin Sun, the founder of TRON for almost a decade. She believes that Sun’s marketing was more important than the actual tech innovations that have been attributed to him by people (basically media). She commented on Sun as a client creating the illusion of genius through media tricks.
Justin Sun’s timing is bad considering that just a few weeks ago he was in the news for developing ties with U.S. political figures and investing in World Liberty Financial, in an attempt to use that investment as cover from further investigations by the SEC. For his involvement with the SEC he has already been charged with wash trading and selling unregistered securities. This matches up with Ten Ten’s claim that Justin Sun and TRON were falsely inflating volume.
The “Epstein Files” Threat
The whistleblower ended her disclosure with a chilling warning, suggesting that the current leak is merely the tip of the iceberg. Claiming to possess “full records,” including emails, login logs, and exchange data, she stated she is ready to hand over evidence to investigators through secure channels.
She concluded with a dark joke that may unsettle many in the industry: “I also have an ‘Epstein files’ of the crypto world.” Whether this implies a list of other complicit industry figures or further incriminating data on Sun remains to be seen, but the threat suggests that for the Tron founder, the past is far from buried.
