scams

An upcoming ‘scams code framework’ proposed by Australia’s Department of the Treasury considers applying sector-specific codes and standards to banking and cryptocurrency scams, among others.Adding to the efforts of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a regulator wit ...

Hong Kong authorities reported on Nov. 27 that 145 users were affected in a scam by the unlicensed cryptocurrency exchange Hounax, resulting in a loss of 148 million HKD ($18.9 million), according to local media Shenzhen Commercial News. On Nov. 25, local police held an initial press ...

A Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) owner says he has managed to avoid a potentially “dreadful day” after being asked to retrieve a banana for a photo from someone they initially believed was interviewing them for Forbes.On Nov. 27, NFT collector ‘Crumz’ detailed his run- ...

Inferno Drainer, one of the most popular crypto wallet-draining kits for hire says it is shutting down for good after helping phishing scammers steal nearly $70 million worth of crypto this year. In a Nov. 26 Telegram post, the team behind Inferno Drainer said it was “time for us to move o ...

Numerous users of the crypto analytics platform Nansen have received phishing emails from scammers pitching an “exclusive opportunity” to participate in the fictitious “Nansen Airdrop.”On Nov. 23, crypto community members on X (formerly Twitter) flagged an ongoing p ...

Stablecoin issuer Tether froze roughly $225 million worth of USDT tokens as part of an investigation into a Southeast Asia human trafficking syndicate launched by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). In a Nov. 20 announcement, Tether said it had worked with the DOJ and crypt ...

Senator Elizabeth Warren has emphasized the risks of cryptocurrency scams targeting senior citizens in the U.S., with the support of a cybersecurity expert supporting her legislation on digital assets to prevent future scams.In a recent senate hearing, Warren outlined the significant incre ...

Three Arrows Capital (3AC) co-founder Kyle Davies has reportedly been seen in Bali as he continues to evade authorities over the collapse of the defunct hedge fund.Davies, who has been embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings following the collapse of 3AC in 2022, has already been sentence ...

Google has filed a lawsuit against three scammers for creating fake advertisements for updates to Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard, among other things, which, when downloaded, installs malware.The lawsuit was filed on Nov. 13 and names the defendants as “DOES 1-3,” as the ...

The price of a memecoin drawing its namesake from Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence project “Grok” plummeted over 70% after blockchain sleuth ZachXBT alleged the token’s social media account was recycled from a scam token project.In a Nov. 13 X (formerly Twitter) ...

One of the Big Four banks in the U.K., Lloyds Bank, has said that reports of cryptocurrency investment scams by victims have surged by 23% in the current year compared to the same period in 2022.According to a press release published by Lloyds Bank, an increasing number of investors face t ...

The former compliance chief of OneCoin — a 2015 crypto scheme that defrauded investors out of $4 billion — has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in Manhattan federal court.In a Nov. 10 statement, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said that U.S. District Ju ...

The saga of the imploded cryptocurrency exchange JPEX continues to develop as Taiwanese prosecutors have reportedly found new alleged suspects.The Taipei District Prosecutors Office (TDPO) requested Chang Tung-ying, the chief partner at JPEX’s office in Taiwan, be held in custody over alle ...

Scams facilitated on BNB Smart Chain (BSC) decreased from $55.4 million in the second quarter of 2023 to $13.6 million in the third quarter, according to an AvengerDAO report contributed to by security firm HashDit. This represents a 75% drop in the amount lost to scams.According to the se ...

A new artificial intelligence-backed scam is as multi-faceted and lengthy as it is unconvincing  — at least for would-be victims who dig below the surface.I recently received a threatening “DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice” email from an alleged law firm claiming that a Cointel ...

Almost $600,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) has been stolen from users who downloaded a fake Ledger Live application on Microsoft’s app store, according to cryptocurrency sleuth ZachXBT.The on-chain analyst spotted the scam, “Ledger Live Web3” on Nov. 5, which is tricking users into ...

Phishing scammers have cloned the websites of crypto media outlet Blockworks and Ethereum blockchain scanner Etherscan to trick unsuspecting readers into connecting their wallets to a crypto drainer.A fake Blockworks site displays a fake “BREAKING” news report of a supposed mul ...

Recently, a fraudulent priority withdrawal scam has surfaced, targeting FTX users. Sunil, an advocate for FTX, has utilized the social platform X (formerly known as Twitter) to caution FTX account holders about this phishing scheme and urges them to avoid clicking on any dubious links.Suni ...

American venture capitalist Tim Draper issued a warning on social media that scammers are attempting to con crypto users using an artificial intelligence (AI) voice generator.In an Oct. 19 post on X (formerly Twitter), Draper warned his roughly 254,000 followers to be mindful of “thi ...

Fraudsters in Ireland prefer targeting traditional banking customers instead of cryptocurrency investors amid a two-year-long bear market.The frequency of cryptocurrency scams is often directly proportional to the hype and profits around the ecosystem at a given time. It appears that the o ...

Cybercriminals have discovered a new way to spread malware to unsuspecting users, this time, by manipulating BNB Smart Chain (BSC) smart contracts to hide malware and disseminate malicious code.A breakdown of the technique known as ‘EtherHiding’ — was shared by security r ...

OpenSea, a well-known non-fungible token (NFT) platform, has responded to recent accusations on social media regarding the involvement of a former employee in the AnubisDAO rug pull incident of 2021. The accusations, made by an anonymous account called NFT Ethics, suggested that Kevin Pawlak, a form ...

In September 2023, crypto-related exploits reached an unfortunate peak, making it the worst month of the year so far in terms of cryptocurrency theft, with a staggering $329.8 million in digital assets stolen. Blockchain security firm CertiK reported on October 2 that the most significant contrib ...

Creditors of the troubled crypto lender Celsius Network are facing an increased risk of phishing attacks as the lender's bankruptcy proceedings near their conclusion. Reports on social media have indicated a rise in phishing attacks by scammers pretending to be Stretto, the bankruptcy services pl ...

A former Deutsche Bank investment banker, Rashawn Russell, has pleaded guilty to investment fraud in connection with a fraudulent cryptocurrency trading scheme. Russell, aged 27, was charged earlier this year for his involvement in a scheme where he operated a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment fu ...

A cryptocurrency whale has fallen victim to a massive phishing attack, losing millions of dollars in staked Ethereum on the liquid staking provider Rocket Pool.A large cryptocurrency investor lost the entire address balance of Lido Staked ETH (stETH) and Rocket Pool ETH (rETH) due to a phi ...

Crypto scams targeting MetaMask users are using government-owned website URLs to con victims and access their crypto wallet holdings.Ethereum-based crypto wallet MetaMask has been a long-standing target for scammers — which involves redirecting unwary users to fabricated websites tha ...

Australian crypto exchange Swyftx is launching a new “Earn and Learn” crypto education platform, aimed at rewarding its users for completing courses covering an array of crypto scams. The new educational platform will launch on Sept. 6 and comes amid heightened attention over crypto-r ...

With the field of artificial intelligence evolving at near breakneck speed, scammers now have access to tools that can help them execute highly sophisticated attacks en masse, warns the co-founder of Web3 security firm Quantstamp.Speaking to Cointelegraph at Korea Blockchain Week, Quantsta ...

A United States District Court has allowed a nearly three-year-long class action lawsuit against the creators of HelbizCoin to go ahead, as per a court ruling filed on Sept. 1.The class action suit was first brought against Helbiz, its CEO Salvatore Palella, and its partners in 2020, with ...

Malicious actors targeting the crypto space have taken more than $45 million in digital assets from their victims in the month of August alone and a total of $997 million year-to-date (YTD), according to a report shared by the blockchain security firm CertiK. Within the report, CertiK ...

Retired pro soccer star Ronaldinho Gaúcho has testified at a congressional hearing in Brazil, denying his involvement in an alleged $61 million crypto pyramid scheme that bore his name.On Aug. 31 Ronaldinho appeared before a parliamentary committee inquiry where he refuted any role in the ...

As the United Kingdom prepares for a ban on finance-related cold calls, the UK Treasury issued a consultation and call for evidence to gauge a full picture of the impact on businesses, or the costs associated with introducing and implementing the ban. On May 3, the UK government announced an ambi ...

Legal proceedings have been initiated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against individuals and their organization, Fundsz, citing their involvement in a deceptive scheme concerning cryptocurrencies and precious metals trading.Rene Larralde from Melbourne, Florida, Juan Pa ...

Researchers from San Diego State University in California developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system to identify, track and expose free cryptocurrency giveaway scams on X (formerly Twitter). Called GiveawayScamHunter, the automated system discovered 95,111 scam lists between Jun ...

The X (Twitter) account of crypto-focused venture capital firm Blockchain Capital was seemingly taken over by scammers attempting to lure users with the promise of a token claim.On Aug. 9, Blockchain Capital’s account made multiple posts promising a giveaway of “BCAP” tokens and directed u ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned of criminal actors that are hijacking social media accounts and posing as legitimate people in the nonfungible token and crypto space. It also raised concerns over spoof websites that dupe victims into thinking they are using legitimate platfo ...

A blockchain security firm tried to warn users of an imminent rug pull surrounding a crypto project, but investors became angry and fired back. The firm rescinded the security alert. Then, the project it accused of being a rug pull pulled the plug.This is the story of CertiK, a blockchain ...

The Curve Finance lending protocol has terminated governance token rewards for select liquidity pools affected by the July 30 Curve exploit and July 6 Multichain exploit, according to an Aug. 2 social media post from a member of the protocol’s governing body. The ending of rewar ...

A new memecoin on Coinbase’s Base network fell 85% after its developer allegedly pulled 1,034 Ether in liquidity, worth approximately $1.9 million, from the market, according to social media reports and blockchain data. The developer for Bald (BALD) denied making any market sales of the coi ...

The recent flood of scam tweets on pro-XRP lawyer Jeremy Hogan’s hacked account has finally dried up after nearly four days.Since July 24, the XRP community has been diligently warning others and tagging Twitter’s support after they noticed Hogan’s account tweeting malici ...

Cryptocurrency payments platform CoinsPaid has pointed the finger at North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group as being behind the hacking of its internal systems, which allowed them to steal $37.3 million on July 22.“We suspect Lazarus Group, one of the most powerful hacker organisati ...

A Tennessee husband and wife are facing charges over “Blessings of God Thru Crypto” — an allegedly fraudulent investment scheme that swindled at least $6 million from over 100 victims in just six months.A July 24 complaint from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CF ...

The Connext cross-chain bridging protocol has announced a new token standard to reduce losses from bridge hacks. According to a July 24 announcement, the new “xERC-20” standard allows token issuers to maintain a list of official bridges and control how many tokens can be minted by eac ...

A Canadian police department has issued a public warning of a possible trend where high-value cryptocurrency investors are being robbed in their own homes.On July 19, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Richmond, a city south of Vancouver, said several similar robberies involving c ...

Members of Crypto Twitter have quickly identified and warned others against a scam being pushed by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams’ compromised account.The "Web3 Security Alerts" channel on Telegram notified followers that Adams’ Twitter account had been compromised on July 20. Th ...

Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter alternative, Instagram Threads, has been forced to implement rate limits in response to a growing number of reports citing spam attacks and crypto-shilling bots.Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the introduction of rate limits in a July 17 post on the Th ...

Lending protocol Geist Finance is shutting down permanently due to losses from the Multichain exploit, according to a July 14 social media post from the app’s development team. Geist contracts were paused on July 6, then resumed in “withdraw and repay only” mode on July 9. The l ...

Cryptocurrency scams have fallen a massive 77% from $3.3 billion to $1.1 billion over the first six months of 2023, according to a recent report by blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis.The catch, though, is that ransom attacks are back in trend, with perpetrators pocketing 62.4% more r ...

Four major crypto drainers have emerged to fill the vacuum left by the notorious wallet sweeper Monkey Drainer, with thousands of victims targeted and millions in crypto stolen already this year. The crypto drainers — called Pink Drainer, Inferno Drainer, Pussy Drainer, and Venom Dra ...

Approval management platform Revoke has issued a fix aimed at mitigating a new crypto scam, which involves baiting crypto users into revoking “fake approvals” and then stinging them with excessively high transaction fees. On July 9, Revoke.cash stated that it had received ...

Scammers appear to have wasted no time since the launch of Meta’s new microblogging app — with several high-profile Crypto Twitter users already warning of imposter accounts on Threads. Threads was launched on July 5 and has seen sign-ups climb above 98 million in the days foll ...

The investigative work of independent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT has been cited in a class action lawsuit in Canada against Boneheads, an alleged $3.1 million nonfungible token rug pull.Tweeting on July 7, ZachXBT highlighted that lawsuit as he reiterated accusations that the Boneheads tea ...

Update (July 7 at 9:33 PM UTC): This article has been updated to include Coinbase's response. Coinbase’s users have been turning to Twitter to report scams and phishing attacks involving the company’s services and applications in recent wee ...

On June 26, decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator Chibi Finance was exploited by its own deployer account, and $1 million worth of cryptocurrency was drained from its contracts in an apparent rug pull or exit scam. The protocol’s official user interface disappeared, producing a 404 error, and a ...

Blockchain Australia’s new CEO, Simon Callaghan, is urging Australia’s banks, the government and the crypto industry to come together to combat rising cryptocurrency scams.Speaking on the final day of Australian Blockchain Week in Melbourne on June 30, Callaghan announced that ...

According to a report published by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs on June 28, a combined $7.8 billion was paid to cryptocurrency pyramid and Ponzi schemes worldwide in 2022. In addition, another $1.5 billion in crypto was alleged by TRM to have been spent on darknets for illicit activities ...

Over $204 million was lost in decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks and scams in the second quarter of 2023, according to a June 27 report from Web3 portfolio app De.Fi. The report, titled “Q2 De.Fi Rekt Report,” was partially based on data from De.Fi’s “Rekt Database.” Over $208.5 million wa ...

With talk about integrating artificial intelligence and the cryptocurrency industry mostly focusing on how AI can help the crypto industry combat scams, experts are failing to pay attention to the fact that it could have the complete opposite effect. In fact, Meta recently warned that hackers app ...

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Tres Finance warned the community about a scam that involves fake tokens designed to mimic legitimate transactions.In an interview, Tres Finance co-founder Tal Zackon and the company’s technical lead, Idan David, shared the details of a scam using frau ...

Web3 and other blockchain-powered markets are still in their infancy, with most of the underlying technologies, economic models and coding architectures still being improved, tested and updated. While this is normal for an emerging market and technology, there are always loopholes that bad ...

An apparent malicious app purporting to be crypto hardware wallet Trezor has been taken off Apple’s App Store, though a quick search has revealed that other copycat apps are still lurking.On June 20, Managing Partner at Crypto Lawyers, Rafael Yakobi, posted a security alert regarding ...

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has received over $1 million in donations in slightly more 24 hours from the crypto community to pay for his legal fees in a defamation lawsuit.ZachXBT, known for his investigative work in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, has become embroiled in a ...

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has been sued for libel by one of the people he accused of fraud, according to a June 16 social media post. According to the post, Jeffrey Huang, known as “MachiBigBrother” on Twitter, has accused ZachXBT of damaging his reputation through false allegat ...

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has reportedly been granted permission to permanently remove individual customers from all court filings, while the names of companies and institutional investors will be sealed on a "temporary basis."In recent times, several mainstream media outlets ha ...

Over the past few weeks, a group of scammers has hijacked more than eight Twitter accounts belonging to prominent figures in the crypto space to promote phishing scams. The group has stolen almost $1 million worth of crypto so far, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. In a June 9 Twitte ...

In a June 8 speech at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange & Fintech Conference, United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler compared the current crypto market to the 1920s U.S. stock market, saying that it is full of “hucksters,” “fraudsters&rdquo ...

The amount of cryptocurrency lost to "rug pull" or "exit scams" — where founders suddenly up and leave with investors’ money — had outpaced the amount stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in May, a blockchain security firm has revealed.A June 1 report from Beosin said in May t ...

Crypto Twitter was flooded with warnings from users on June 2 after the Twitter account of Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, was seemingly hacked to promote a “scam” cryptocurrency airdrop.On June 2, Murati’s account tweeted what ap ...

The Pixel Penguin alleged ‘charity project rug’ Nonfungible-token (NFT) project Pixel Penguin has caused a stir this week in what a blockchain investigator ZachXBT has alleged is a “charity project rug.” The project quietly launched in February, but drew a lot of attention on May 31 following ...

DeFi project Fintoch was accused of. that it may be a pyramid scheme, and its creators stole $31.6 million from users. This was reported by blockchain researcher @ZachXBT. Millions of users were withdrawn to BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain) via Tron and Ethereum n ...

PeckShield reports that observations by its experts show that a series of scams involving the launch of about 24 memtokens have occurred in the past ten days. PeckShield analysts warn cryptoinvestors, who succumbed to the urge to earn on the rush of memtokens, of the dang ...

According to the latest report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), cryptocurrency scams in 2022 resulted in a loss of $148.3 million to Australian citizens. The regulator received 3,910 reports of cryptocurrency fraud over the past year, with an average loss of $37,900 p ...

Cryptocurrency fraudsters have resorted to using the identity of one of the wealthiest women in Australia, Gina Rinehart, who is the owner of Hancock Prospecting, to advertise their schemes. The scammers are claiming that Rinehart has invested in a particular cryptocurrency startup and that users ...

The number of cryptocurrencies in the world has reached tens of thousands. Are many of them good? Hardly. How can an investor determine what is a high-quality altcoin, and what is a “scam” and another fraudulent project? ...

Based on a report from dappGambl, a Chinese social network TikTok has been found to have a significant amount of misleading information on investing in cryptocurrencies. The study conducted by dappGambl analyzed 1,161 of the most popular TikTok videos with hashtags about cryptocurrencies, which r ...

The Department of Justice in the United States has made a groundbreaking announcement stating that they have seized digital assets worth approximately $112 million from cybercriminals who were involved in cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering. According to the US Department of Justice, six ac ...

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has recently issued a warning to the public about the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrencies. The bank urged individuals to refrain from trading cryptocurrencies and participating in ICOs, citing a large number of complaints from users who have su ...

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a warning to investors regarding the potential risks associated with investing in crypto assets. The agency has specifically cautioned against relying solely on proof of reserves (PoRs) published by cryptocurrency exchanges, stating that ...

According to a recent survey by Kaspersky Lab, more than one-third of Americans who own cryptocurrencies have fallen victim to scams. The survey, which was conducted between October 20 and 24, 2022, among 2,000 Americans, revealed that many cryptocurrency users fail to take adequate security meas ...

According to the FBI Internet Crime Report 2022, cryptocurrency fraud cases have seen a significant increase of 183% from the previous year, reaching a total of $2.57 billion. This is a sharp rise from the $907 million reported in 2021. The data was collected from the Internet Crime Complaints Ce ...