Tag Archives: crypto scams

Scams have been rampant this year despite the market slowdown. A new type of sneaky crypto scam with front-running scam bots on YouTube has shot up six-fold in 2022. These types of frauds attract users by posting advertisements on social media claiming to teach you how to make thousands of dollars of money in a day using a front-running bot. When clicked, these ads link users to a YouTube video showing how to create and deploy a front-running script to generate “profits.”...

The American authorities ordered Jeremy Spence (a.k.a. “Coin Signals”) to pay over $2.8 million in restitution to victims of his cryptocurrency fraud.  The US Department of Justice (DOJ) sentenced the criminal to 42 months in prison in May for running a scheme that defrauded investors with more than $5 million. ‘An Illustration of the CFTC’s Best Efforts’ The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that the US District Court for the Southern District of New York...

CroLend, presenting itself as an algorithmic, autonomous lending protocol built on top of the Cronos network, has deleted all social media pages, the website doesn’t work, and its TVL has been drained to $0. This prompted the community to argue that this is the latest example of a rug pull in the space. Citing user information, PeckShield took it to Twitter earlier to inform that all relevant posts and sites associated with CroLend have been erased. These include the Twitter...

Two robbers reportedly deceived an Asian investor and his friend with a fake bitcoin scheme and stole nearly $50,000, three phones, and documents from them. The Criminal Court sent the wrongdoers to jail for three years and ordered their deportation once going out of prison. Crime in Dubai According to a recent coverage, the assault happened last July in the Mankhool area of ​​Dubai. Back then, an undisclosed individual and his friend decided to invest in bitcoin and found a...

The Estonian police arrested two individuals in the country’s capital Tallinn for their alleged involvement in a $575 million cryptocurrency scam. According to the prosecution, Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin lured hundreds of thousands of victims to interact with a dubious digital asset mining service and to invest in a virtual currency bank. The entities did not pay the promised dividends to the people, while the criminals pocketed the funds. Another Multi-Million Crypto...

A new report from blockchain security firm CertiK revealed that a large group of professional “Know Your Customer (KYC)” actors are being employed by dubious blockchain developers and scammers to defraud crypto investors. KYC verification systems are used by crypto projects in the Web3 space to establish customer identity and qualify the source of funds. The process helps the platforms protect themselves from fraud, money laundering, and terrorist financing. Crypto Fraudsters...

The Albanian authorities will reportedly extradite the notorious Faruk Fatih Ozer (CEO of the distressed crypto exchange Thodex) to Türkiye. He escaped his homeland last year after allegedly defrauding the platform customers for nearly $2 billion. Justice to Be Served According to a recent coverage by BBC, the Albanian and Turkish authorities negotiated the deportation of Ozer, who has 15 days to appeal the decision. The 27-year-old and his troubled crypto platform Thodex...

A new study has found nearly all crypto projects listed on Uniswap between 2018 and 2021 were malicious and scam-related.  The study titled DO NOT RUG ON ME: ZERO-DIMENSIONAL SCAM DETECTION, was conducted by three researchers; Bruno Mazorra, Victor Adan, and Vanesa Daza from the University of Pompeu Fabra and the University of Barcelona.  Could Uniswap Be Housing Fake Projects?  Uniswap was created in 2018, and the protocol describes itself as a growing network of...

The popular Instagram influencer Jebara Igbara, also known as “Jay Manzini,” pleaded guilty to money laundering, wire fraud, and wire fraud conspiracy. He used the social media platform to promote various schemes to investors but, in fact, defrauded them with $8 million. In addition, Igbara told his followers he wanted to buy a huge amount of bitcoin and that authorized exchanges would not allow him to accumulate such a stash. He urged Instagram users to send him BTC,...

Right as the weekend was about to start, crypto Twitter sounded the alarm on a possible rugpull scam on Aptos. A relatively new blockchain environment touted as a “Solana-killer,” Aptos is a Layer-1, PoS blockchain built by two former devs from the Diem Group, Mo Shaikh and Avery Chang. The pair reportedly worked on developing Libra/Diem, Meta’s now-defunct stablecoin project. Although Diem was halted due to regulatory pressure – who worried that allowing Meta to create its...