Beecoin and Sunbird Foundation in Sri Lanka: The Notice-Date Dispute and Missing Recovery Record

Evidence cut-off: 28 August 2026

Method and status. This documentary case study distinguishes promotional representation, participant evidence, regulatory determination, referral, arrest, bail, interim restriction, defence submission, court direction and final judicial finding. It does not determine civil or criminal liability. No original interviews were conducted for this edition. It is independent academic and investigative analysis, not legal, financial, investment or recovery advice, and has not been reviewed or endorsed by Cardiff Metropolitan University. Documentary corrections may be submitted through the corrections channel; material corrections, clarifications and later developments will be identified in the article’s update record.

The most important Beecoin question is deceptively simple: what happened, and when? The public record supplies an official Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) notice dated 22 April 2024, later reports of court and investigative steps, and a March 2025 defence submission that placed the relevant public announcement after the arrest date counsel asserted. Those propositions cannot all be collapsed into a single “ban date”.

The primary document is clear within its own scope. On 22 April 2024, CBSL published that complaints had led to investigations under section 83C of the Banking Act and that it had determined “Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation” conducted or had conducted a prohibited scheme. It also asked the Attorney-General to consider instituting criminal proceedings (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a). That is an authoritative regulatory determination and referral request. It is not a conviction, and it does not disclose the date of each complaint, investigation step, internal determination or referral.

The later procedure is less transparent. Sri Lankan reporting says the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) informed the Colombo Chief Magistrate of CBSL’s action on 2 May 2024 and that a travel restriction was issued against three unnamed people on 23 July. Daily Mirror later reported defence counsel’s submission that three named suspects had been arrested on 24 October 2024; the same report described them as on bail when the matter returned to court on 27 March 2025. On the last date, the magistrate directed the CID to clarify when Beecoin and its related software had officially been prohibited (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024a; Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024b; Daily Mirror, 2025).

The signed court orders, complete B-report and CID response were not located. The correct public conclusion is therefore not that the court accepted either chronology. It is that a chronology dispute was raised, a report was directed, and the accessible primary CBSL notice predates the arrest date asserted by defence counsel by six months.

The answer in brief

Seven conclusions are supported at the evidence cut-off.

1. CBSL made a regulatory determination. Its 22 April 2024 notice named “Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation” among eight entities or applications it had determined conducted or had conducted prohibited schemes under section 83C (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a).

2. The Attorney-General step stopped at consideration. CBSL asked the Attorney-General to consider instituting criminal proceedings. The notice did not announce acceptance of the request, identify an accused person, supply a charge sheet or record a conviction (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a).

3. The statutory prohibition preceded Beecoin’s notice. Section 83C was inserted by legislation certified on 10 February 2005. It prohibits specified conduct where participants contribute money or monetary value and benefits depend largely on participant or contribution growth. A 2024 notice did not create that offence (Sri Lanka, 2005, s.83C).

4. The public evidence supports digital and social recruitment, but not a complete compensation plan. The study’s participant table identifies one pseudonymous Beecoin participant from Anuradhapura; its separate availability table marks a website and app, while the narrative attributes WhatsApp updates and village trust to that participant. The availability table itself marks WhatsApp unavailable, and the participant table supplies no Beecoin referral rate or package (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).

5. A crypto representation is visible; an auditable crypto rail is not. A page using the combined Beecoin and Sunbird names promoted earning through USDT. That is evidence of promotion, not proof of actual deposits, exchange trades, withdrawals, token ownership or an on-chain transfer. No authenticated Beecoin/Sunbird wallet, token contract or transaction hash was located (Sunbird Foundation & Beecoin Exchange-branded page, 2023).

6. The reported arrest-date submission, bail status and travel restrictions do not establish guilt. The public sources reviewed do not supply a final judgment. The July report does not name the three people affected by the travel restriction, and the record does not establish that they were the same three people later named as suspects (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024b; Daily Mirror, 2025).

7. Scale, assets and recovery remain unverified. No reliable Beecoin-only participant count, deposited-principal measure, net-loss total, frozen-asset schedule, forfeiture decision, realised value or enforcement-related claimant distribution was located.

Evidence labels used in this case study

The public record mixes an official determination with promotional traces, participant research, anonymous allegations and compressed court reporting. Five labels are used throughout.

• Promotional representation records what a page bearing the Beecoin and Sunbird names invited viewers to do. It does not authenticate the page owner or prove platform performance.
• Participant evidence records what one pseudonymous participant told academic researchers. It does not establish a universal contract, typical experience or scheme-wide loss.
• Regulatory determination records what CBSL formally concluded under section 83C. It is authoritative within that regulatory scope but not a criminal conviction of an individual.
• Reported procedure records a reputable outlet’s account of what investigators, counsel or a judicial officer did or said. Without the underlying order or filing, the report remains attributed.
• Public-record limit states that a qualifying document was not located in the defined search. It does not prove that no restricted, unindexed or non-public record exists.

These distinctions are particularly important here because secondary reports use “banned” as shorthand. Section 83C is a statutory prohibition, CBSL’s April notice is a dated regulatory determination and public warning, and criminal responsibility requires the relevant process and proof. They are not interchangeable stages.

What can be established about the represented model?

The accessible Beecoin mechanics are fragmentary. They do not support the confident package tables or national loss totals often attached to better-documented online schemes.

A social-media page titled “Sunbird Foundation & Beecoin Exchange” carried a video post dated 19 June 2023 whose visible metadata invited people interested in earning through cryptocurrency, specifically USDT, to join. The page title and metadata establish that somebody using those combined names marketed a crypto-denominated opportunity. They do not establish who controlled the page, where funds went, whether trades occurred or whether every participant was presented with the same model (Sunbird Foundation & Beecoin Exchange-branded page, 2023).

The strongest independent scheme-level evidence is Thilakarathna and De Peiris’s 2025 Journal of Financial Crime study. It interviewed ten people across several online schemes through snowball sampling. Only one pseudonymous participant was allocated to “Bee coin”: “Sumedha” in the participant table and “Sumeda” in the narrative, aged 43 and from Anuradhapura. The table leaves the Beecoin referral-commission and package fields blank (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).

The participant narrative says the person joined through a WhatsApp group that carried daily updates and success stories, and that recommendations from villagers helped create trust. Those details support social proof and a digital communication channel. They do not identify who recruited the participant, the joining date, the amount contributed, a promised return, a realised withdrawal or a net loss (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).

The study also contains an internal inconsistency that should remain visible. Its comparative table marks Beecoin as having both a website and an app but marks WhatsApp and Telegram as unavailable. The narrative later attributes WhatsApp recruitment directly to the Beecoin participant. The discrepancy may reflect different definitions, a table error, a private rather than official group, or changes over time. The article cannot choose among those explanations without the underlying interview record.

The result is a limited mechanism finding: Beecoin was represented as a USDT-related digital opportunity; the study’s availability table reported a website and app, while one participant described WhatsApp communication and community trust. The accessible evidence does not disclose a complete compensation algorithm or verified flow of funds.

Was cryptocurrency actually used?

There is more evidence of crypto language than in Fast3Cycle, but less auditable evidence than in Sports Chain or OnmaxDT.

The promotional metadata expressly referred to USDT. A contemporaneous online account and later videos located during the search also used exchange, trading and withdrawal language, but those user-generated items were not sufficiently authenticated to establish the mechanism or numerical returns. The peer-reviewed paper discusses cryptocurrency deposits for Fruugo Online and OnmaxDT in a general passage; it does not make that statement about Beecoin. Its Beecoin-specific table supplies no currency, token, wallet or package amount (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).

No located record provides all four elements needed for an on-chain claim:

1. a blockchain network;
2. a public address or token contract;
3. evidence attributing that address or contract to Beecoin App or Sunbird Foundation; and
4. a defined transaction, balance or ownership date.

The name “Beecoin” is not attribution. Multiple unrelated projects and tokens use “Bee”, “BEE” or “Beecoin”. Attaching an explorer balance to this Sri Lankan matter on name similarity alone would risk tracing somebody else’s asset.

The correct description is therefore: the public promotional record supports a USDT-facing representation, but the actual funding, accounting, trading and withdrawal rails have not been independently verified. It is possible for a platform to display crypto-denominated balances without conducting the represented external trades. It is also possible for genuine crypto transfers to occur without a proprietary token. The available evidence cannot decide between those possibilities.

The Financial Intelligence Unit’s general January 2024 warning described common crypto-investment fraud features, including promises of high returns, false testimonials and demands for additional payments. Beecoin was not named. That notice supplies public-safety context, not proof that Beecoin used any particular method (Financial Intelligence Unit of Sri Lanka, 2024).

What section 83C prohibits

Section 83C was inserted into the Banking Act by the Banking (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2005, certified on 10 February 2005 and published as a Gazette supplement on 11 February. It prohibits a person from directly or indirectly initiating, offering, promoting, advertising, conducting, financing, managing or directing a scheme where a participant must contribute money or monetary value and the participant’s benefits depend largely on growth in participants or their contributions (Sri Lanka, 2005, s.83C(1)).

The definition of “monetary value” includes a medium of exchange whether or not redeemable in money, stored value, a payment instrument or credit to an account. Section 83C therefore does not depend on cryptocurrency being legal tender. The statutory question is the contribution-and-dependency structure proved on the facts, not the technological label attached to the payment (Sri Lanka, 2005, s.83C(1)).

The same provision makes punishment contingent on conviction after summary trial before a Magistrate. It also gives authorised CBSL officers investigative powers and provides for cooperation with law enforcement. Those stages matter. A CBSL investigation and determination can support regulatory status; an Attorney-General request concerns a possible next step; arrest and bail concern process; conviction requires adjudication (Sri Lanka, 2005, s.83C(2)–(8)).

This is why the phrase “Beecoin became illegal when CBSL banned it” is not supportable. The statute had already prohibited qualifying conduct for nineteen years. The April 2024 notice publicly recorded CBSL’s scheme-level determination. It did not create the underlying legal test, date every alleged act or prove an individual’s knowledge.

What CBSL determined—and what it did not

CBSL’s 22 April 2024 notice says it acted on complaints, conducted investigations under section 83C and determined that eight listed entities or applications conducted or had conducted prohibited schemes. “Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation” appears first (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a).

The notice does not disclose:

• when a Beecoin complaint was first received;
• the period of investigated conduct;
• who controlled the app, foundation, accounts or promotional channels;
• which facts satisfied the contribution-and-dependency test;
• the identities of any person referred for possible prosecution;
• whether the Attorney-General accepted the request; or
• any restrained property or claimant amount.

Its procedural sentence must be preserved: CBSL requested the Attorney-General to consider instituting criminal proceedings against the listed entities. “Consider” does not mean charge, indict, prosecute or convict. No public Attorney-General decision or primary charge document was located for this review (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a).

Chronology: event date is not publication date

Event date	Publication date	What the accessible record supports
10 February 2005	11 February 2005	The Banking (Amendment) Act inserted section 83C. This is general law, not a Beecoin finding (Sri Lanka, 2005).
19 June 2023	19 June 2023	A page using the combined Beecoin/Sunbird names promoted earning through USDT. This is promotional representation, not verified trading or payment evidence (Sunbird Foundation & Beecoin Exchange-branded page, 2023).
Date of participation undisclosed; interview reported as 22 March 2024	22 September 2025	One pseudonymous Beecoin participant described WhatsApp updates and community trust to researchers. Publication occurred after the regulatory and reported court events (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).
Complaint, investigation, determination and referral dates undisclosed	22 April 2024	CBSL announced its section 83C determination concerning Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation and its request that the Attorney-General consider criminal proceedings (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a).
2 May 2024	3 May 2024	Sri Lanka Mirror reported that the CID informed the Colombo Chief Magistrate of CBSL’s action concerning four named entities, including Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation. No case number or order was supplied (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024a).
23 July 2024	23 July 2024	Sri Lanka Mirror’s Sinhala report said a judicial officer it described as the Colombo Chief District Judge issued overseas travel restrictions concerning three unnamed people alleged to have helped promote BeeCoin, following a CID Financial Crimes Investigation Unit request (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024b).
24 October 2024	27 March 2025	Daily Mirror reported defence counsel’s submission that three suspects had been arrested on this date. No contemporaneous Police release or arrest record was located (Daily Mirror, 2025).
Since 2011; Beecoin-specific transfer date undisclosed	19 December 2024	CBSL listed Beecoin among 20 institutions concerning which it said information and records had been supplied to law enforcement. Its statement that some matters were before courts and others remained under investigation was not mapped to Beecoin (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024b).
27 March 2025	27 March 2025	The Colombo Chief Magistrate directed the CID to report the exact date on which Beecoin and related software had officially been prohibited. Three named suspects were reported as present and on bail (Daily Mirror, 2025).
No new Beecoin event identified	5 August 2026	CBSL continued to list Beecoin App and Sunbird Foundation in its cumulative prohibited-scheme notice. The new determination in that publication concerned TM App (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2026).

This chronology is stronger than a list of headlines because it exposes the derivation. The 3 May story is reporting a 2 May court statement. The October arrest date appears in a March 2025 report of a defence submission. The peer-reviewed participant evidence was published in September 2025 but concerns an interview reported as occurring in March 2024. None should be silently redated.

The reported court steps

CID statement to court on 2 May 2024

Sri Lanka Mirror reported on 3 May that the CID had informed the Colombo Chief Magistrate the previous day that CBSL had “banned” four entities, including Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation. The article linked the court statement to CBSL’s recent public release (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024a).

The report is useful as evidence that the matter reached a magistrate’s court context. It is not a substitute for the court file. It supplies no case number, parties, B-report, requested relief, ruling or next date. Its word “banned” is also less exact than CBSL’s primary formulation that it had determined the listed entity/application conducted or had conducted a prohibited scheme.

Travel restrictions reported on 23 July 2024

Sri Lanka Mirror’s Sinhala edition reported that an overseas travel restriction was issued on 23 July against three people alleged to have contributed to promoting BeeCoin. It said the order followed a request from the CID’s Financial Crimes Investigation Unit and was to be communicated to the Controller of Immigration and Emigration (Sri Lanka Mirror, 2024b).

The source identifies the judicial officer as “Colombo Chief District Judge Thilina Gamage”. That institutional description is preserved because the signed order was not located and this review cannot silently correct the publisher’s terminology. The report does not name the three people, identify a case number, give the duration or reproduce the grounds. It also does not establish that those three were the same people later named in Daily Mirror.

A travel restriction is an interim procedural measure intended to preserve the availability of a person. It is not a charge, conviction, asset restraint or forfeiture finding.

Reported arrest-date submission and bail status

Daily Mirror’s 27 March 2025 report names Harischandra de Silva, Dayaratne Walisundara and Deshan Iresh Silva as three suspects who were present in court and then on bail. Daily Mirror reported defence counsel’s submission that the three had been arrested on 24 October 2024 (Daily Mirror, 2025).

This article names them only because a reputable court report connects the names to a defined procedural status. It does not describe them as offenders or assign a role beyond the source. Arrest is not guilt; bail is not acquittal; the report does not supply a charge sheet, bail date, bail terms or final adjudication.

The March 2025 notice-date dispute

The March hearing requires the greatest care. Daily Mirror reported that defence counsel argued Beecoin had not yet been officially declared unlawful when the arrests counsel said occurred on 24 October 2024, and that CBSL newspaper announcements dated 20 January 2025 came later. Counsel also submitted that the clients lacked prior knowledge of Beecoin’s unlawful status. After hearing the submission, the Chief Magistrate directed the CID to report the exact date on which the company and related software were officially prohibited (Daily Mirror, 2025).

Three distinct propositions must be separated.

First, the defence position is a submission, not a court finding. The report does not say the magistrate accepted the chronology or the asserted legal consequence.

Secondly, the accessible primary CBSL record publicly named Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation on 22 April 2024, six months before the 24 October arrest date asserted by defence counsel. If the defence submission meant that no CBSL public announcement had named Beecoin before the arrest date counsel asserted, the located official PDF appears chronologically inconsistent with it (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024a; Daily Mirror, 2025).

Thirdly, the report may have compressed a narrower dispute. Counsel may have been referring to a particular newspaper publication, formal notice, software identification, service step or other evidential instrument. The article cannot determine which because it lacks the transcript, defence motion, CID report and later ruling.

There is also a legal distinction between the date of a public determination and the date on which conduct is prohibited. Section 83C had been law since 2005. A prosecution would still need to prove the alleged conduct, the relevant actor and any required mental element. But the statutory prohibition did not begin with a January 2025 newspaper advertisement (Sri Lanka, 2005, s.83C).

The defensible wording is therefore:

On 27 March 2025, the magistrate directed the CID to clarify the date of the relevant official prohibition after defence counsel placed timing and knowledge in issue. The public CBSL notice reviewed for this article is dated 22 April 2024 and predates the arrest date asserted by defence counsel. Without the CID response and later ruling, the precise evidential dispute and its legal resolution remain unknown.

No reliable scale or loss total

No reliable source reviewed supplies a Beecoin-only participant population, total contributions, amount withdrawn or net loss. Daily Mirror’s report describes an allegation concerning public funds and poverty-alleviation projects but provides no amount, complaint schedule or loss method. That allegation cannot become a measured loss (Daily Mirror, 2025).

The peer-reviewed study’s one Beecoin participant cannot fill the gap. Its ten-person cross-scheme sample was selected through snowball sampling, primarily from interconnected networks, and the authors acknowledged selection bias and the absence of statistical generalisability. It is valuable qualitative evidence about recruitment and perception; it is not a prevalence study (Thilakarathna and De Peiris, 2025).

The following categories must remain separate:

Measure	Public Beecoin record	Publication rule
Participant count	No reliable scheme-wide measure located	Do not turn social-media membership or one research participant into a population estimate
Contributions	No authenticated ledger or bank/exchange schedule located	Do not treat displayed balances as money paid
Promised return	No sufficiently authenticated Beecoin compensation document located	Do not reproduce anonymous online percentages as established terms
Withdrawals	Promotional and user-generated claims exist, but no audited history	Do not infer system-wide payment performance
Net loss	No claimant methodology or reconciled total located	Do not subtract unverified withdrawals from unverified deposits
Public assets available for recovery	No Beecoin-specific schedule located	Do not convert a travel restriction into an asset freeze

This restraint is not cosmetic. A gross transaction flow can greatly exceed participant principal; a platform balance can be fictitious; an early withdrawal can coexist with a later net loss; a police allegation can use an amount different from a verified claimant total. Without definitions and source records, adding those categories produces false precision.

Asset tracing and recovery: the record is silent on outcomes, not evidence of refusal

The targeted public search located no Beecoin/Sunbird-specific signed order or official schedule showing:

• a bank-account or crypto-wallet freeze;
• property restraint, seizure or preservation;
• a traced wallet balance or exchange account;
• beneficial-ownership adjudication;
• forfeiture, confiscation or release;
• realised or repatriated value;
• a verified claimant process; or
• an enforcement-related distribution or restitution payment.

The July 2024 travel restriction concerns people, not property. Bail concerns liberty pending procedure, not asset availability. Neither can be presented as preservation of claimant funds.

This public-record absence does not establish that no account was examined, no confidential preservation step occurred, no participant received a private repayment or an authority refused recovery. Sri Lankan lower-court records are not comprehensively searchable online, and investigative files may be restricted. The narrower finding is that the accessible record does not allow a reader to trace a chain from complaint, to identifiable property, to restraint, to final ownership, to realisation and distribution.

Later official position

CBSL’s 19 December 2024 progress release included Beecoin App and Sunbird Foundation among 20 institutions concerning which it said investigation material had been given to law-enforcement authorities and cooperation had occurred. It then said, collectively, that some matters were before courts while others remained under investigation with a view to filing actions (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2024b).

The update does not map either category to Beecoin. Independent court reporting supports that some Beecoin-related matter had reached a magistrate, but the CBSL release itself does not identify a charge, accused person, case number or stage.

On 5 August 2026, CBSL continued to carry “Beecoin App and Sunbird Foundation” at item 17 of its cumulative prohibited-scheme list. The new determination in that notice concerned TM App. Beecoin’s inclusion is continuity evidence: it shows that CBSL retained the published classification. It does not show that the platform was operating in 2026, that any further arrest had been reported or that assets had been recovered (Central Bank of Sri Lanka, 2026).

As of 28 August 2026, the exact defensible status is:

CBSL has published a section 83C determination concerning Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation and asked the Attorney-General to consider criminal proceedings. Reputable reports record court notification, interim travel restrictions, an arrest date asserted in defence submissions, bail and a later direction for the CID to clarify the relevant official date. The accessible public record reviewed does not establish a filed charge, final judgment, appeal, restrained-asset inventory, forfeiture or claimant distribution.

What Beecoin adds to the wider series

Beecoin adds a distinct evidential problem to the arachchi.ge series.

First, official dates must control recycled chronology. The April 2024 CBSL PDF is primary evidence that Beecoin and Sunbird Foundation were publicly named before the October arrest date later asserted by defence counsel. A later summary of a defence submission cannot erase that document. Equally, the primary notice cannot tell us what counsel specifically disputed. The master series should display both and identify what record is missing.

Secondly, regulatory notice and criminal liability are different questions. CBSL’s determination is decisive evidence of its scheme-level regulatory conclusion. It does not prove the guilt, knowledge or conduct of any named person. The arrest date reported through a defence submission, the travel restriction and the bail status do not supply that missing adjudication.

Thirdly, crypto branding, crypto promotion and verified crypto movement are separate categories. Beecoin’s promotional trail includes USDT language, making the crypto connection more than a name alone. But no public-chain attribution or authenticated transfer record was located. The case therefore sits between F3C, where a crypto rail was not established, and the better-documented crypto-payment records in other articles.

Fourthly, public enforcement visibility still stops before recovery. The public can identify a regulator’s conclusion and several procedural events but cannot identify preserved property, a claimant methodology or distributable value. That gap prevents the public from evaluating whether intervention protected funds rather than only recording prohibition.

For the later public-safety hub, the case yields three practical lessons: do not confuse a charity or poverty-alleviation narrative with financial authorisation; do not treat an app balance or daily trading signal as proof of external trading; and preserve the exact platform URL, app package, wallet address, transaction ID, bank receipt and withdrawal demand before access disappears.

Update triggers

This assessment should receive a dated review if any of the following becomes public: the complete B-report and reliable case number; the signed July 2024 travel order; contemporaneous arrest and bail records; the Attorney-General’s decision; a charge sheet; the CID report directed on 27 March 2025; a later magistrate’s ruling; a trial, revision or appeal judgment; an authenticated Beecoin/Sunbird platform or compensation plan; a reliably attributed wallet, token contract, transaction hash or exchange record; a scheme-specific participant or loss methodology; a signed restraint, release or forfeiture order; an asset-realisation statement; or an enforcement-related claimant distribution.

Until then, the conclusion should remain narrow: Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation is the subject of a published CBSL section 83C determination and reported criminal procedure, but the notice-date dispute has no located public resolution, the crypto flow is unaudited, and no public recovery outcome has been verified.

References

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (2024a) ‘Notice to the Public: Beecoin App/Sunbird Foundation and seven other entities/applications’, 22 April. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (2024b) ‘Progress on Combating Prohibited Schemes under Section 83(C) of the Banking Act No. 30 of 1988, as amended’, 19 December. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (2026) ‘Notice to General Public on Prohibited Pyramid Schemes’, 5 August. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Daily Mirror (2025) ‘Court orders Police to submit report on Beecoin ban by Central Bank’, 27 March. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Financial Intelligence Unit of Sri Lanka (2024) ‘Protecting the Public from Crypto Investment Scams’, 14 January. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Sri Lanka (2005) Banking (Amendment) Act, No. 2 of 2005. Certified 10 February; published as a Supplement to Part II of the Gazette, 11 February. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Sri Lanka Mirror (2024a) ‘CBSL updates pyramid scheme entity list’, 3 May. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Sri Lanka Mirror (2024b) ‘“Bee Coins” promoters: travel bans for three’ [Sinhala], 23 July. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Sunbird Foundation & Beecoin Exchange-branded page (2023) ‘Invitation to earn through cryptocurrency (USDT)’ [Facebook video metadata], 19 June. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

Thilakarathna, A.S. and De Peiris, N. (2025) ‘Financial deception in the digital age: investigating online pyramid schemes and their socioeconomic impacts in Sri Lanka’, Journal of Financial Crime, 32(6), pp. 1191–1210. Published online 22 September. Available at: Original (Accessed: 28 August 2026).