Bitcoin Forum

I read people's post on this forum saying even if regulations find its way to crypto space scams will never seize to exist and they keep comparing it to real life criminals even when we have COPS ,POLICE FBI, COURTS crime rate is still increasing, well this is my answer to all of you, in crypto space we don't have COPs or Police to hunt down scammers, accepted, but what do you think will happen if there is no cops, police, courts in real life? criminal activities will grow alot with no boundaries, it will be the same thing with crypto space, if there are laws that can jail scammers at least they will start hiding and there will be FEAR, unlike when there is nothing to fear off scammers now, scammers have too much freedom compare to real life criminals where there is something to tackle them.

Then can you tell me, who caught this scammer if we do not have law?
https://www.coindesk.com/thai-gang-member-arrested-over-alleged-16-million-crypto-fraud
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/5-cryptocurrency-scammers-charged-over-3-million-fraud-and-more-than-100-got-sucked-in-2019-8

we have a law here but it is not as intense as our real-life. If we do not have a law in this space, every single people in here will try to scam people without worrying get caught by the law. The reason why it is not as intense as our real-life because it is very hard to caught the scammer. The technology is able to cover up their identity while they are doing the scam which results in freedom for some scammers.

I don't agree with you mister, what about the projects that scam people and get exposed later on? bitconnect is a big example and the law knows who is responsible for bitconnect, we all know who built the scam project so why haven't he get jailed since all this while? i think crypto should be left the way it is today because if government get involved it will only worse

I am not an expert in regards to law, however, I think once it has been proven and it is known who the culprit is and there is one who will press a charge against the culprit. I guess the law that exists in a country will apply. In our country, those who create investment scam through crypto are being caught by the police and consider the same as those who scam people in real life.

Those we consider scammers are not going to be held accountable and even caught if there are no people who fill file a legal complaint first. It has to be like that. The reason why scams are found everywhere is that there are no initiatives from the scammed themselves. If only there are legal actions done against the scammers, there will surely be hearings and trials happening. That is what happened to several projects in the past.

Another problem would be jurisdiction. It is hard to press charges when the project is based in some places which are too far to file the complaint itself. Another would be the cost, legal cost is expensive. Not to mention the cost in going to the exact place to file the case.

Yup this is right, we have some laws here in this industry but it is not strictly implemented or giving a whole focus on the authorities but you can seize the team's project if they run away with your money. I heard there are some ICO law suits that helps investors to get their investments in ICO.

Many crypto scammers are been apprehended in some part of the countries like Philippines for example, they arrested crypto scammers are just small time thieves just like in real life, what about big ICO scam cases that the CEO of the project is well known? can anyone tell me any apprehended CEO or teams of any ICO scam? o guess not, i am not a fool, there is more that meet the eye

There's a process for everything, I know that the law enforcement is doing their job. If there's an evidence of crime committed then those who are involved should be punished, however there some loopholes in crypto space. For example if you've been scammed by ICO operating overseas it would be a headache to file a formal complaint.

Criminals can be caught and even scammers. the regulation will be made to have the profile or identity of the team before doing any kind of ICO/IEO (this is why we need regulation)
We have a law for it and it should be implemented, though, they are hard to locate or identify if they are just using a random wallet.
Remember that there is no KYC needed when making some BITCOIN or ERC-20 wallets or other blockchain wallets.
But, as I said there is a law and they can be caught!

Thats your own opinion, but base of the previous events most of the scammers are successfully evaded the rule of law of those place (country) in which those iCO's was originated. thats because there is no regulatory body that can follow them. It make sense to me if those regulation specially in ICO's was already exist it can be use as a deterent to those scammers think twice.

Really? then what happened with them?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/police-arrest-alleged-india-head-of-now-defunct-bitconnect-scam
https://cointelegraph.com/news/australian-federal-court-imposes-travel-ban-fund-freeze-on-bitconnect-promoter

the law is not able to arrest everybody because they need evidence before arresting the suspects. As I said before, we have a law but because of technology some scammers are able to cover up their identity thus leading them to freedom. The government should get away from us but the law should stay with us because it could protect us from the criminals.

I agree with you if there is a proven culprit to the investors and the evidence is there, then just report it to the police. I am sure that the police will follow up according to the law, because now there are many rule of law countries. crypto, honestly if I find a scamer and it is proven then I will report it to the law.

They must know first what is cybercrime and hacking in crypto is belongs to that cybercrimes. If you are confiscated with strong evidence through your gadget use you may put in jail and problem commit a year or life time imprisonment. At this case don't let hacker might hack you, protect our self and depend from those hackers. If you can't, you might fall into them. There is an increase but few of them are being caught by the authorities. Learn how cybercrimes law works, https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/computer-crimes.htm

I believe scammers can be dealt with without the authorities taking over the cryptocurrency space.
The decentralized Crypto-space should remain decentralized with self-regulatory system put in place to filter-out scams. Have you seen a good self-regulatory system in work before? You have  the internet "police", "lawyers", FBI etc working as community to filter out scams. They have to be incentivized though.

Here in our country scammers are prosecuted, these scammers managed to get away because they are victimizing people that are not in their region and sometimes, they pay a settlement to people who sue them leaving the small players like us in limbo, because we don't have the means to sue them because they are living in other countries.

I think that only real victims of scams will fully understand the message that you are driving at. We need regulations and strict implementation of the rules in this industry because we are almost run over by so many scams, frauds and abusive people not to mention the hackers, phishers and the likes. This industry will not mature if there will be no clear ways that we can rely on against the man scammers now putting up their strong presence in here. Deregulation and decentralization are two good things and I am supporting these but there should be clear path to deal with this cancer of the industry otherwise people will start to lose trust and confidence with us. The industry itself must initiate self-regulation in response to this big problem so that we can work hand in hand with authorities to run after these scammers and fraudsters.

Well I don't think that the cyber police are not doing any efforts to catch the criminals but this depends on the country rules as far as I know. Most of the time , if the scammer leads traces that leads to him , it will be caught and send to jail but if its hard to catch him , its just like any other hard case that takes time in order to be solved.

Maybe you're right that for crypto the law is still thin and they don't know how to act when they catch or they don't catch the scammer but money are still money so there should be the same laws. In a few years scammers will get caught easily when they operate.

Try to type-in on google search "crypto arrested" and you will find out there are lot of groups or individuals that already been arrested though scammers are so many in crypto-space and most of them are still free and lurking around to find their new victims. crypto is unregulated but they must be complaint on government rules in terms of crypto on which country they are located. the police is just having a hard time to caught and track those scammers because of the decentralized system and sometimes they escaped being caught because no one file a case against them.

Wait. You seem to be misguided. Using crypto currencies doesn't mean that you are invulnerable to the law. If you commit a crime, you are a criminal and you will be prosecuted. Doesn't matter if you use fiat currency to commit that crime or crypto currencies. You will still be a law breaker. It is just that finding the criminal becomes a harder task for them if they use crypto currencies.

actually what you said above has a point too, but I'm not sure if scamers can be completely eliminated in this industry with a legal system, at least it can reduce some exceptions and I think the crypto space is large and full of wealth so scamers will never stop cheating victim.

I don't know what you are talking about. Almost all scams are online. That is just the age we are living in. There are certainly laws against this sort of thing. It is just too easy for criminals to scam though.
I blame the ISP and website and domain providers. They should properly investigate complaints since all the people's personal info is there. I don't understand why it is so hard to just get someones ISP then all their contact details through that. With DMCA they manage to do it.

Criminals can only be tackled when they are actually caught and this would prove very hard even with regulations considering the fact that blockchain technology promotes anonymity because for example, even without any laws, if a criminal, maybe a hacker was successfully able to access your funds and steal your funds, if you somehow discoverd the identity of the hacker and reports them to the appropriate authorities, that criminal would still be punished even without the regulation. Regulations would only have an impact on projects that wants to raise funds.

Scammers and cheaters will always exist with or without the laws. Law is applicable everywhere; it is just not intense in the crypto world as in the real life. It’s one of the reasons there are KYC’s; to try and curb cheaters and scammers.
I believe the law will be more intense in the crypto world when regulation comes in.

There is a law and cops but the problem is we are in the internet which is huge and anonymous so, hackers and scammer can get away without getting caught very easily they can cover their tracks and move to another location and that's it and that makes them very hard to catch anyway, we should be careful to person dealing with and don't fall into scams

I think the main issue here is not the law, but the way crypto hides the scammers identity. We have vpns, mixers, Tor, and other sources that I don't know yet to hide our addresses and identities. The police would have a hard time trying to catch them. They can also hide their scammed assets to other wallets or other coins in order to lose track of the transactions. Scammers are getting confident because of the advancement of our technology and with that, cyber crimes are increasing.

Because it's almost impossible to create of the law environtment in crypto space, that's why many country are banning crypto one of the reason is the crime in crypto is cannto trackable. Most of scam projects are not placing their real team in their websites, he's using random pictures from the internet and making random names and complement it with such great portofolios. So, newbie people will get tricked and at the end they are untrackable. So, there are the plus minus of crypto and we have to get used to these conditions

Not unlike in real life or offline, all criminals can be traced because of their identity, if the criminals are working in a country where the crimes happen, the cops can easily trace and hunt them, not unlike online, they are able to disguise themselves, and if they scam people from another country, the offended party, will have to go to the  location to hunt the scammers, which is additional burden on their parts, education is still the key on how n t to fall from these scammers online.

I think that not all crimes in crypto are kept silent because of anonymity.
In my opinion, there are 2 types of scamming people, the first is individuals and the second is companies.
In the case of individuals, which may be rather difficult to trace because they do not know the shape of their faces, their origin, etc. But, if this scamming happens, I think only fools fall on them.
Second, the scam of the company. There are a lot of examples, such as, new projects that raise funds and when funds are collected they run away. Or exchanges that suddenly close and carry users' money.
In this second, the possibility of further action from the law or the police must be there. Because the number of victims they must be many and also the identity of the company or CEO must have been open at the beginning.
So not all crypto crimes are not followed up by law, there must be. It's just that we don't want to find that information.

The anonymity of cryptocurrency is taken advantage by criminals to pursue their crimes. However, in some countries, some scammers were caught and punished. I believe that due to the latest technology, crypto will still be able to catch scammers in the future. For now, we only have to be smart and find ways to get rid of them.

Scammers continue to act until now due to unclear regulations governing the sale of new project tokens. The existing regulation to date is the regulation of trading in exchangers and therefore IEO is a safe way to invest in a new project even though it does not guarantee that the tokens from IEO will benefit after the initial listing.

The thing is all those scammers usually comes from a third world country where the laws or regulation there is limited and also country like US will have a hard time if it is about to figure out or find someone among billions. It is basically the same case as ordinary internet scanners although there are laws regarding to this thing those scanners still exist anyway because they are coming from a country with weak law enforcement.

the problem is because the crypto industry is free, financially free for anyone who wants to take part in it, good people & bad people are always around us. so, there is no guarantee for your security, only you alone can determine your destiny here.

We need that regulation badly, with regulation every new project developers must go through verifications and this can actually create FEAR in dubious developer's mind, scammers need to go, how far can we safe ourselves with research when scammers are getting more smarter? there will come a time when our research won't be able to safe us

I disagree, as crypto is really meant to be pseudonymous and should be the same until the same. The thing is, there are abusive people that use crypto for their own interest hence take advantage on it. While we have certain law about it though isn't enough to cover some fields. If there will be regulation that can strict and cover all the issues in crypto then maybe people will have their second thoughts to do such thing.

Anyway, I just wonder why there's still people fall for such scheme, when you can even tell that there's something shady behind it. 🤔

I understand the need of regulation but at the same time this might lead to some sort of centralization which might actually be a bad vibe for investors but we can have a common verification platform for new bounties and projects which will filter the scam projects but I am not sue how far this will help as scammers will always be there as these are disadvantages of decentralized projects.

If you think the freedom of scammers is the same as real-world criminals, then crypto needs to be regulated like there is a law for every criminal. but the problem is that crypto is not regulated by anyone, the government is not involved in this industry. so scamers are always free to fool weak people.

There have been some arrest made as pointed out by the people that replied earlier though the outcome from such arrest and trials are not made public.

Your observation have some facts and i will try to understand you differently since we are talking about cyber crime that affects crypto space.
The ico scams shall be reduced or eradicated completely if there is a central crime control as regards crypto scams, most of the arrest made only relates to one country or the other and those arrested might have contravened certain financial law of the country and investigations shows that they got the money through crypto ico scams.

I know a particular ico scammer from india that are still walking freely on the street despite all the emails sent to the authority concern.

We need interpol to create a department for crypto space industry in order to track and arrest these criminals.

Agree that cryptocurrency requires government regulation because if there is no penalty for scammers, there will continue to be fraud on behalf of the sale of tokens. With regulation, investor confidence will increase and the public will be interested in investing

I guess you could say I come from a third world country, but you are probably wrong about that, because the big scammers in the ICO space are the ones with good education and a lot of money to run big scams.

The ones you talk about are just small time con men and HYIP managers. The big ICOs that ripped people off? Trust me, they went to good schools and come from good families with good income.

I tend to agree, actually even in using digital, law is still effective. There is a law created to counter every situation even in crypto. With or without cops, using crypto in illegal activities doesn't mean that you can avoid being apprehended by the law. Once an individual committed a crime, there is always a law that will chase them.

people dont believe a lot of things in this forum because of the distrust, so is this regulations proposal. Scammers are not guilty until and proven so is the process. I think its still the early stage, as scams are being detected and loophole are known so will be  and help the production of effective regulations. A lot of the popular high-end exchanges had broken the law at a time and staying in such a regulated environment like USA ATM is scary to them. Some are moving away and some that wanted are cautioned lately

I could not agree more, wrong is wrong even if every one is doing it and right is right even if no one's doing it. Crime is crime and law is law, even here on crypto space law is above us ruling the right thing and then there are authorities that executes it. These criminals were not able to capture because of the anonymity, and lead no where because of complex patterns.

It's reality that we need to accept, since there's no regulations and we are working online the chance of becoming a victim is high. Best to make sure
in learning things that can avoid you or lessen the risk of getting into scammers hole. If you know how protect yourself online the chance is slim for
scammers to penetrate you.

Scammers and hackers after successfully hit their victims will just disappear and move to another target.

You are right. In the case of cybercrime, the police do require more effort to catch the culprit compared to crime in the real world (which is easily traced). However, that does not mean it can not be done. The proof, in some cases of hacking and fraud under the guise of fundraising, has been successfully revealed by the police. It is also the responsibility of each of them to increase their awareness of all types of fraud that are used by fraudsters, always do analysis before taking any action.

It will all depends on which state or country you or the scammer lives. In some countries, the internet activities are possible to be traced just like in the movies. There is no anonymity for amateur cyber criminals. For instance, in many Southeast Asian countries are developing and continue updating their cybercrime laws and policies to protect not just their people but also their own economy from everything online.

This is the dominant events but it is not entirely true in every place. There are government policies and bodies that aims to police the cyberspace even though it is almost difficult. Such transactions with cryptocurrency are often lead to where the scammers will convert the money he stole into fiat. And when such suspicions rose because that's too much of money to be transferred, investigations will start. The difficult part is to find evidence or else, everything is just an accusation.

You're right OP. Cryptocurrency scammers are hardly being caught. I think some people are getting this wrong; since cryptocurrency is anonymous it is hard to get someone when they scam another person, and that's because there is no means to trace them. If a hacker should hack an exchange and steal the money they can move it to a coin mixer and that way you won't be able to trace them for good.

But, if there were regulation and everyone that wants to make use of cryptocurrency is required to verify their identity, people will be afraid to try such, even hackers because they know that with the information they have given to their wallet provider they will be traced easily.

I saw someone post about someone that was involved in a project that scammed people over $16 million dollars and was caught. Well, that's a different case, those people were caught because they exposed their identity, which is different from the case I have explained above. You cannot start a project and get investors without proving your identity, that's why, sometimes, scammers will try to impersonate someone else.

In some instances you are right but! each country has its own laws regarding that matter. While some countries has no law covering cryptocurrency related crimes. But i think most countries has a law about scams and frauds that involve money, but most of the enforcers are not aware about it. since it was a cryptocurrency related matter that needs an special attention.That's why i presume that the law was not implemented thoroughly. that's why those fraudster and scammers still continue to wreak havoc in the crypto industry.

Yes, I have been thinking about it- Is there no effective way to police cryptocurrency scams? If culprits can be apprehended and made examples of, it'll serve to dissuade them fast growing population of cryprocurrency scammers. Although I do not support regualtions but there has to be a way to crackdown on such individuals.

The problem is that the majority of crypto community is still against any kind of regulations. If people are not ready to sacrifice anonymity, than we can expect such things to happen any time, because nobody is really after scammers.

I believe that we ourselves should try to identify fraudsters and tell the community about them. Moreover, there are already tools to decorate scammers. For example this forum. Here you can mark a person who conducts fraudulent activities and can warn other participants in this way. Yes, of course, this does not mean that this fraudster will be sent into custody or fined, but still this is better than doing nothing.

It's hard to decipher what Op is talking about exactly, but there are crypto scammers who have gotten caught and have even gone to prison because of it.  Trendon Shavers, Mark Karpeles, and the silk road founder all suffered the consequences of illegal crypto use in one way or another and there might be others that I'm just not able to recall.

But I do agree that a lot of scammers get away with it if bitcoin or another crypto is involved, and it kind of makes sense.  A lot of people who are into crypto want to remain anonymous and don't want to go to law enforcement, which would expose them to scrutiny.  Crypto really gets a bad rap because of its dark market uses, and that's unfair in the extreme but it is what it is. 

Exactly, if there are no form of control or regulations the space will be a total chaos, those who are always rooting for privacy and anonymity, it is not that it is a bad thing but what about the disadvantage it will bring, already we have too many scammers in the crypto space, and as long as there is no any control it will be even worse,
There is no way people can have complete freedom and expect things to be normal.

Even if tight regulations come to crypto, scams will still exist that's right. The first way to tackle scam is using one's common sense, knowing how to spot one and avoid it. Regulations will only reduce the scam rate, but not entirely curb it. And mind you, regulations still has its downsides, remember this is crypto and decentralisation should be upheld.

What an earth are you even talking about? One of the reason for regulations is that it's for making scamming harder by default for criminals.
Because lack of regulations they can't tackle these problems faster, but of course they will investigate some of them.
Regulations are just coming behind, this is state of the art new tech we are dealing with and the law can't keep up.

I am not sure where you are going with this. Just because people are saying that scammers gonna scam doesn't mean that people don't want regulations against them.

Kinda tough decision considering that people want decentralization but cant take care of their own problem of not being scammed either. Even if we dont want to sacrifice anonymity we’ve lost it anyway due to the KYC implementation in every exchange so if the government make a regulation what will be the differences regarding our privacy anyway? Its the same.

There will be no fraud if people are wiser than what they will take logically. Most people are tempted over the lure of the huge when the reply in logic is not possible. And they took it and it came to pass the deception, which yes they themselves why no more wisely transact in this digital world. They made a post and were outraged at the forum because it has been on the scam by an obscure person.

That's right. There are no police in crypto and no one can protect you. That is why everyone says that everyone should observe security measures and protect their funds on their own. After all, no one will help you if you encounter fraud.

You can't just outright blame people for being scammed because they have flawed logic I mean that's such an obvious answer everyone know that's the main reason but we should aswell help them to not being scammed even though that's hard and some people might be dumb enough to just go all in to a dumb project existed. That's the exact reason why there are law and regulation and the same thing actually could work if can be implemented into the ICO and IEO world however that'd take a lot of effort considering some scammers also hiding behind shadow luring stupid people to do stupid things.

Although many crimes related to cryptocurrency that have not been revealed, but the police can catch some of them, this is proof.We must realize that the government must have warned that cryptocurrency is a high-risk investment. Each loss is the responsibility of each, is not most of it also anonymous? The police and the authorities do not remain silent, they will move if the evidence is strong enough. Unfortunately, most fraudsters have tricks that are strong enough to be difficult to uncover.

Every loss is any market is owned by the investor and no government will share those losses  :P, the government will regulate to collect tax because they need the profit you make and not because they care for your investment to be secure, there are not much truly anonymous coins if that is what you are tell here.

If the transaction is done through bitcoin or any blockchain based coin then they can be traced and will be caught.

of course, all countries in the world also have their own laws and rules. there is customary law, there is also state law. everything is arranged so that its citizens can live with discipline and obey the rules. Likewise with crypto, without any restrictions or legal restrictions, there are no rules and verdicts for violators, then life in the crypto world will still be like this forever. new projects, scams, and theft. if there is a cyber team that oversees this industry, I think every crime or unnatural activity that occurs in the crypto world, can definitely be traced.

There is still justice in crypto space especially if the hacker will be traced, he will surely be sentenced and jailed. But if the hackers will be able to hide all of it's footprints after the attack then no one can pursue him.

But it's not easy to be a hacker, as there are different type of hackers also. Black hat for criminal activities and white hat that test the security of your website or fight the black hat hackers attempt.