On February 21st, Friendsies, a non-fungible token (NFT) collection that recently raised approximately $5 million, announced in an unexpected way that it would be taking a “pause” on its roadmap, sparking rumors in the community of a possible rug pull. According to the Friendsies team, “the volatility and challenges of the market” complicated the project’s...Read More
A recent study by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis found that 24% of the tokens launched in 2022 had the characteristics of pump-and-dump schemes. Most of the tokens plunged by 90% in the first week of their launch after their creators dumped their holdings. This, according to Chainalysis, is a typical feature of a pump and...Read More
Last year was less profitable for crypto scammers as their revenue plunged nearly 50% in 2022, according to a new study by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The blockchain company noted that the decrease in revenue could be linked to the decline in the value of cryptocurrencies due to the correlation of most scam types with...Read More
A British pensioner living in Nottinghamshire parted with $207,000 after becoming a victim of a bitcoin romance scam. The police managed to restore some of the stolen funds and warned people to be extra vigilant with online dating due to the rise of similar frauds. The Latest BTC Romance Scheme The Nottinghamshire police said a woman...Read More
On February 17, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged NBA Hall of Famer Paul Pierce with illegally promoting the EMAX token on his social media accounts. The EMAX token was offered and sold by EthereumMax. According to the complaint, Pierce has agreed to pay a penalty of $1,115,000, plus approximately $240,000 in disgorgement and...Read More
Gilbert Armenta – the former boyfriend of Ruja Ignatova (more famous as the “Cryptoqueen”) – will reportedly spend five years in jail for participating in the fraudulent cryptocurrency project OneCoin. The Bulgarian-born Ignatova – the Founder of the infamous Ponzi scheme – sits on the FBI’s ten most-wanted list. She was last seen in 2017...Read More
Wybo Wiersma – a 40-year-old Dutchman who studied at Oxford’s St Cross College – will serve a 54-month prison sentence for stealing £2,156,000 (more than $2.6 million) using a cryptocurrency scheme. UK detectives linked the scam to the man who used the pseudonym Norbert van den Berg in his malicious website and university coursework. ‘Greed...Read More
According to an investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer, more than 168 shell companies in the United Kingdom are suspected of operating fraudulent crypto or foreign exchange trading schemes, around half of which are potentially linked to pig-butchering scams. In fact, these organized crime groups were found to be using the...Read More
Randall Crater – the Founder of the fraudulent cryptocurrency business “My Big Coin” – will spend 100 months in jail. Federal prosecutors previously insisted his punishment should have been 13 years. Crater Defrauded Investors With Over $7.5 Million U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston ruled that Crater should stay in prison for more than eight years...Read More
Stephen Carr – a resident of Meaford, Ontario – said he lost his entire life savings of nearly $500,000 after being conned into a cryptocurrency scheme on YouTube. Scammers have used the video-sharing website multiple times to lure victims. Some have even uploaded fake recordings of famous people, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates,...Read More
The popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBT recently called out two growing Twitter accounts for perpetrating multiple NFT-related scams over the past month. The analyst explained the timeline of events on Friday, including their sudden rise to prominence and the rug pulls they’ve managed to pull off. Calling Out the Scammers As outlined in the analyst’s Twitter...Read More
Scammers have created a fake FTX token, dubbed FTX 2.0, to impersonate the now-bankrupt crypto exchange less than 24 hours after the company’s new CEO announced that the platform could be revived. According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, the bad actors sent the tokens to the FTX exchange, pretending to add liquidity before airdropping them...Read More
On November 13, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) announced that it had successfully cracked down on a criminal network engaged in online scams through call centers. The network was spread all around Europe. According to Europol, the operation was carried out on January 11, 2023, following an investigation that began in...Read More
Victims of the Ponzi scheme BitConnect may finally find some respite. The United States District Court for the Southern District of California ordered over $17 million in restitution to be distributed to nearly 800 victims from over 40 different countries due to their investment losses in BitConnect, which defrauded thousands of investors across the world....Read More
Less than two weeks into the new year, malicious entities have already started doing what they do best. According to the latest update by the blockchain security company CertiK, two recently created contracts – CirculateBUSD and CirculateWBNB – have been pumped away by the creators. The funds have been bridged to Ethereum and deposited into...Read More
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Neil Chandran and seven other individuals and entities for orchestrating the fraudulent cryptocurrency investment scheme called CoinDeal. The suspects allegedly defrauded investors with around $45 million over the years and used the money to buy real estate, cars, and a boat. Halting the Crime The SEC accused Neil Chandran,...Read More
It’s no secret that wash trading continues to plague the crypto market. A paper titled “Crypto Wash Trading,” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), found that an overwhelming number of unregulated crypto exchanges account for a sizeable portion of wash trades. The nonprofit research organization studied 29 major exchanges, such as Binance,...Read More
The global investment banking firm – Jefferies Group – reportedly determined FTX creditors could retrieve as much as 40% of their lost money. In an interview for The Block, Joseph Femenia – Global Head of Distressed Debt Trading at Jefferies – said there’s light in the tunnel for FTX creditors who could recover between 20% and...Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
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....Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
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...Read More
The popular cryptocurrency options exchange, Deribit, has seen its hot wallet exploited for a considerable $28 million earlier today. According to a statement from a company’s spokesperson shared with CryptoPotato, the funds are safe, and the loss has already been compensated by their reserves. Deribit took it to Twitter earlier today to reveal that its...Read More
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...Read More
The United Kingdom High Court shut down the cryptocurrency firm PGI Global for allegedly running a fraudulent scheme. The company promised investors returns of up to 200% if they purchased digital assets through its platform, but consumers never received such profits. The Latest Crypto Scam in the UK? According to an official press release, the...Read More
