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I remember hearing a lot about such scams after Bitcoin hit the 21K mark for the first time in 2017. Scammers were using the same technique as the one mentioned by you to lure newbies. They used Bitcoin as a mode of investment option but they never invested any money into Bitcoin. The only difference in this situation is that they are not using Bitcoin but their invented coin and are using WhatsApp to finalize the deal. I do not think the authorities will have issues in locating them as Meta the owner of WhatsApp is very helpful as they are the one who will have all the data that the authorities will need to trace the scammers.
I think scammers are well aware of what authorities can do, which is why you often only hear reports about people getting scammed, but not about who the scammers are. From what I've read about WhatsApp, while they can collect timestamps and phone numbers, the messages themselves are encrypted. So, the authorities' main lead would be identifying the owner of a specific number. But scammers know this too, they use disposable SIM cards, making it almost impossible to trace them back.