The FBI has revealed that Americans ripped off more than $10 billion last year due to online fraud.
Of that amount, the perpetrators drained $2.57 billion via cryptocurrency investment schemes.
Cryptocurrency scams are on the rise
Despite a mostly bearish year for the cryptocurrency industry, 2022 was a fruitful year for criminals. the Looting Approximately $2.6 billion US consumers using investment schemes related to bitcoin and other digital assets. In contrast, this scam resulted in “only” $907 million in 2021.
Cryptocurrency investment scams have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of victims and dollar losses for these investors. Many of the victims have taken on huge debts to cover losses from these fraudulent investments,” the FBI report reads.
The agency revealed that the most targeted group is people between the ages of 30 and 49. Previous studies have shown that these individuals are very active in the crypto space, while older investors are yet to adopt the asset class.
The FBI has explained the most common ways crypto scammers attack victims. They often trick people into connecting their wallets to a fraudulent liquidity mining app, thus stealing their money or hacking into their social media accounts.
Celebrity impersonation is also a common method: perpetrators broadcast a video of a dubious investment scheme and post the face of a known person to make their venture appear legitimate. Needless to say, the celebrities were not given permission to appear in the advertisement, while the victims who join the scam often lose their money.
Then, cryptocurrency scammers sometimes pretend to be real estate professionals or employers of a company that offers investment advice. Instead of providing valuable guidance, they try to steal as many targets as possible.
Romantic crypto-faking has also become common
Research by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). open That such scams affected thousands of Americans between January 2021 and March 2022, resulting in the theft of $185 million from them.
Misguided people often choose lonely individuals by pretending to be in love with them. Once they gain their trust, they invite them to invest in a mysterious cryptocurrency project and lie that big profits can fund a potential wedding or romantic getaway.
“Victims of romance scams learn that the heart isn’t smart the hard way. Their search for love makes them easily choose to con individuals they scam out of their money. They pull off an elaborate con that makes their victim explode on them, and by the time the victim gets caught, they’ll be thousands of dollars poorer,” Bankless explained. Times.
These kinds of scams seem to be very popular in the UK. An unnamed British man Lost $200,000 in bitcoin last year after chatting online with a woman named Gia. The latter advised him to allocate assets in a suspicious app, assuring him that the profits would be great. Shortly after doing this, the man saw his balance “distorted” at the same time the woman broke up with him.
British pensioner living in Nottinghamshire separate $207,000 this year after falling victim to a similar scam. She fell in love with a guy who introduced himself as a US Army surgeon and asked her to transfer money to a certain wallet of bitcoins. Her bank and the local police recovered more than half of the amount.
Another $2.5 Billion Stolen From American Victims Through Cryptocurrency Investment Scams In 2022: FBI Report Appears First On CryptoPotato.