Bitcoin Forum

Six people were arrested in the Netherlands and the UK over a $27 million "typosquatting" scam, which involved making a fake website to gain access to user Bitcoin wallets.

5 man and 1 woman got arrested with warrant by the policeman at their homes Charlcombe, Lower Weston, and Staverton (UK), and Amsterdam and Rotterdam (Netherlands). They are really proffesional on accessing others account, there are many affected at least 4,000 victims in 12 countries and it still growing.

“The investigation relates to typosquatting, where a well-known online cryptocurrency exchange was ‘spoofed’ – or recreated to imitate the genuine site – to gain access to victims’ Bitcoin wallets, stealing their funds and login details.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/portswigger.net/daily-swig/amp/six-arrested-in-connection-with-27m-typosquatting-scam

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Good thing is that, they had already caught those six people because if that thing does not happen, the number of being affected by the scam will grow continuously. That is how expert hackers and scammers are.

So always be careful when visiting and trying some unfamiliar websites, always do research about it and read some reviews to assure yourself that it is legit.

I strongly condemn such illegal things on crypto market. Such kind of incidents are only lowering down the reputation of cryptocurrencies in general. The criminals get the benefit of the privacy factor inbuilt in crypto and usually gets away with their wrongdoing.

I am happy at least here police have been able to identify them and brought them under justice. No criminals should be left alone in crypto space! Common people usually try to avoid dirty water.

This is great news.Obviously,not all hackers and scammers are located in third world countries and North Korea.
Those "expert hackers and scammers" eventually got caught,which means they aren't that big experts. ;D
I wonder what hosting were they using for their phishing scam website?I assume that the only way to catch those people,is to push their hosting provider to reveal their identity.Were they using some offshore hosting company?Anyway,it's good to know that the police is going a good work.

So it is like "phishing website" but there is a slight difference.


Source: Google

Again, this is why bookmarks are important.
Making an error in typing it then just using the google finds everyday could be a large risk when someone mimics the website.
Same goes to where we get our information.
Bookmark those legitimate ones to avoid mistakes.

This only proves that Netherlands is Good in catching scammers (How i wish our country will do same because of tons of scamming happening here) imagine that 27million$ are a Lifetime investment of some Victims and maybe those are what they gather from their lifetime crypto investing.
We are in one position in this point mate because these criminals must be all gone Damn.
And this will be an eye opener for those aspiring to be scammers and also those becoming a target .

Great news op. This is similar to the Bittrex phishing hack sometime back where the sites were completely similar. Always double-check site credentials people.

Actually, majority of the hackers are from first world countries like Russia etc based on my research which is why your statement here doesn't make a lot of sense. 3rd world countries actually contain fewer hackers in comparison.

Again, crime in the cryptocurrency world is very easy to do. In addition to scammers who deceive their victims to gain profit, hackers are no less. They use various methods to earn money as much as possible. In fact, this crime is not difficult to do among countries, yes, because this is cryptocurrency, digital system. In my opinion, maybe there are still many scammers and other hackers who are still operating. And maybe even the victims are still not aware of it. So, watch out!

That's right. For people who have been in the crypto for several times, this may be familiar and be one of the risks that may be faced. But for common people, this has become one of the bad images of the crypto world, which may further make them stay away for fear of the incident. In fact, this is only one risk. There are still many advantages to cryptocurrency that can be obtained. However, these advantages seem to be covered by issues like this.

Right, we don't even know who they are, maybe they are around us and we don't realize it. And we only find out after it was exposed. Like what happened in my country a few months ago that horrendous our country.

The article tells nothing.  There are no details about which websites and who they were. Names of those men should have been added to the reports. Looks just a SPAM.

Despite the number of warnings about phishing and typing the URL correctly there are still going to be victims. This isn't just to cryptocurrency but anyone can still be a victim.

I think there is no source to prove the accuracy of the subject yet. However, if it existed, it wouldn't matter. For centuries, fraud, smuggling and many illegal acts have been carried out for centuries all over the world. It doesn't matter if this happens with any FIAT, gold or silver, or cryptocurrencies. The wrong thing here is that the action taken is illegal. I think if we adjust our focus accordingly, we can look from a better place.

Cryptocurrencies offers us some opportunities. It is also possible to use the wrong way to use it correctly. As with everything, there are both advantages and disadvantages here. We have to act accordingly with this thinking.

Damn, this reminded me of a time I got scammed by a Dutch for 2 grand.

If only that shithead gets arrested too.

It is actually like that, changing the URL name close to the original like Binance and other common cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and other typical service that we use.

This really exists.

I guess some of you have seen those fake websites that's showing when you use google search and they are even sponsored.

Had that once, it was so freaking legit it even had it pass the details to the real server before requesting for 2FA.

That's what I know about it too, it is more of like phishing website or brandjacking. They are trying to mislead the people with a single error on the typo, most used letter is lowercase i for l, some are changing the lowercase d with letter cl and some letters are being deducted that you won't notice it easily. I think we have already lessen the  websites that looks like this, some original brand companies were able to track this and already shut it down.


Yeah, you'll see the importance of bookmarking in incidents like this, and also the saving of websites password to trusted websites. With bookmark you can basically distinguish if the website you trying to get in is the one you have used before. You can just put it on your favorites by clicking the unfilled star at the end of the whole search bar, so it will be added to your web starts.

It makes me admire the justice system in the Netherlands. I wish that most countries with lots of scammers could also do the same thing. Scammers and hackers are every country's trash and they really deserved to be punished but most countries are having a hard time catching them. Good job to the Netherlands' authorities for serving the justice fair and fast for the victims in their country.

Yes, thanks to Netherlands police for their excellent work behind crime. Netherlands govt give permission blockchain research-
 https://www.globallegalinsights.com/practice-areas/blockchain-laws-and-regulations/netherlands so that it may be legal in there. So it should not do in Netherlands.

But there are many countries where cryptocurrency is illegal so that people do such kind of illegal transaction to earn money. I think until it whole acceptance through government this kind of will happen every country because there are evil person everywhere.

And I learned another word today - typosquatting. First time to encounter this word. Though I know about such activity of recreating the original site by changing some letters or adding a letter to the authentic one. Just learned now the right word for it.  :P But yes, Netherlands is doing good in pushing themselves to catch those scammers. It means, they really do spend their resources to resolve such scam. Good thing, their staffs superseded the ability of those scammers.

Scammers and hackers are now evolving. The advancement of technology has made them more illegal and talented in fooling people. This seriously inflicted a bad image on the mass. People might now be questioning the security of cryptocurrency. Good thing, the authorities seized them, because if not, more of our co-Bitcoiners will be in a huge slump and it would be hard to get up from a huge loss. This is another reminder to be vigilant and careful of accessing addresses and wallets, to always check its legibility.

Nice post buddy, it is really good that you had shared that kind of information in this forum. I really hate those people who have strong knowledge about technology and uses it for bad things like scamming and hacking. They tend to gain access to different accounts of different people around the world and try to steal the money on that account. They don't even understand and think of those people who will lose their money just because of them. There are many for them to do to make money using their own knowledge I know that they are so intelligent because of their knowledge about hacking why don't they use it for good things or be a white hacker.
Well said they tend to steal accounts of different people because they want easy money and they get too much money by doing that without thinking about the people who will get lost of their money.

Thank you for sharing that kind of information, we should be all familiar on cybercrimes happen all over the world, it will make us more careful on exploring some websites or doing some other stuff online. The good thing is that the government of the Netherland made an action to caught those criminals, they had made so much damage on the cryptocurrency, they are the ones who makes cryptocurrency bad because of those crimes.

It is really sad if you are the one who lost the money because of those hackers, you had lost your money just because of someone who stole it.
Crimes happen all the time because of bad people who tend to do things badly because of getting easy money. It happens most of the time in crypto currency because of many hackers in the virtual world.

The authority should be strict when it comes to that and identifying real websites are very hard nowadays because scammers are really good at making their way to fool people. Typosquatting is the type of scamming where they hijack different websites or fake the URL so that they can have access to the accounts of the victim who input their bitcoin wallet in the website.

If you're a mindful person, you will never try new websites that is related to crypto instead use what you're using for so long. Probably the good website about bitcoin wallets should've a lot of users and reviews and popular so that it is guaranteed that the number of people using that website is high.

You will know that the website is a fraud and looks suspicious if the website lacks a certain features and also the design is plain. If the volume of people is not that huge enough, there's a possibility that the website you're accessing for your bitcoin wallet might be fake. That's why you should look for more reviews and information about the website where you can access your bitcoin wallet.

People will always commit crime irrespective of whether being in crypto or not,  $21 million is no small money to defraud people of, why not utilize that brain on something positive, if they can crea8a website for criminal activities why not turn it into something useful in blockchain that equally generate funds, I guess the mind of scammers work differently,
Anyways, good thing the authorities quickly step into action and was able to apprehend them, it would have been another dent on crypto and a bad experience for some people.

I just figured out that even sites that has a symbol for SSL security or website with a padlock beside it isn't secured at all. Meaning to say that in order for us to be safe and avoid scam, it is not enough that we just rely on this, make sure that we got the right site through inspecting the link we are entering. Most of the time, we just click an auto fill site that mostly lead us to scam sites. I would advise that we should have a book mark of the legit site so that we can easily access it and the right link is provided.

Moreover, save the site's link in our desktop or mobile.

I impressed those authorities around the globe who never stop finding, arresting, and putting those criminals into jail like the Netherland police. Just like where criminals are also into technology it will not be easier to find and identify them yet policemen will never stop catching them and putting them all into jail, no matter how many criminals will be in jail there will still be new criminals that will come and cause another crime to the society.

It'll always be wise for us to make our own safety measures and precautionary actions before dealing with people and sites that we do not know. Self negligence is the best queue for criminals in identifying their next victim like in typosquatting either accidental or just curiosity may be the reason for us to become a victim.

27 million is a shitload of money, I still don't understand how grown people still don't use bookmarks and anyway check with 2FA to get shit secured. I got a kid who occasionally falls for typosquatting but he's got a really good excuse (doesn't and can't know better as he doesn't even type) but I thought with all the education and awareness people get, they still get tricked.

That said, Bitcoin's simply not ready for the masses when even basic internet use isn't.

Indeed and this has been exposed in many threads in scam section i think.
Nope there are some new sites that is legit we have some tools now to check if the sites are scams or phishing sites just look for google.
this is what we need to learn before exploring internet specially if you are a crypto users because we are mostly the target nowadays.

These are very huge numbers since 4000 users (victims) lost around 6500$ each!
It's a bit surprising that some with such "good" amount (around 1 bitcoin...) have not any culture to avoid this type of frauds.
Plus we don't know what are these exchanges "spoofed" but the reputable ones, most of the times use 2FA or double passwords systems so probably there is also a lack of security and there was a security risk by joining/using them.

Bookmarking is really needed especially when you are visiting the same website over and over again like exchanges, online wallets and online banking, this is the main target for typosquatting. What I think of this is that, the domain providers should be accountable also for giving some people the altered domain of some famous websites, is this possible in any way?

This speaks a lot. This is what I'm talking about with the mainstream adoption, we are dreaming even we're not ready for it.

Yeah this is really a user fault since they are not checking any information before they enter their details to a website. This type of scam is the easiest way for people to lose money even local banks have this type of issue, our problem here is the cryptocurrency is decentralized so, once the scammers get your money yo have no other move! you are just going to accept that. People should really be careful in this type of scam. It's better to use a hardware wallet if you want to be safe on these kind of scam.

Better ever than never, but you should know that SSL is not something that signifies website legitimacy, it is a protocol which encrypt data you enter on SSL protected site and send such data to site owner. Encrypted data cannot be stolen and misused. You also need to know that SSL can be obtained completely free of charge today, so this is no problem for those who create fake sites.

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Good work by UK, Dutch police, Europol and Eurojust, now I just hope they will be punished appropriately and more importantly, that some of the victims will be able to get their funds back. This is very good news for all those who have been victims of these scammers because now there is hope, which usually does not exist or is very small in such cases.

I have read an article(AMA) and shared his experience as a hacker that even you have a 2FA, he will wait for you patiently just for him to gain access to your funds and transfer it quickly.

And that will happen if he has already the right login details of your exchange account and other wallet details.

Not just seen but one of the victims.
It was myetherwallet which was also the popular one which had been copied.
They just changed one of the "L" from the word wallet into an "I" in small letters.

That is the first time I had experienced a phishing technique, afterwards I bookmarked everything after looking at the legitimacy of the website.
This kind of events will not stop. With hackers and scammers having so much time spending in front of a computer, they will do evil works.

There are more and more crimes related to cryptocurrency nowadays, and what was distributed in the opening post of crime using the fake
websites method is not the first time. There have been repeated incidents like this, so our awareness needs to be increased. Always be careful
when accessing website, pay close attention to the website address to be addressed. Is the correct website address that we are heading to,
if it is different, leave it immediately that websites.

If this kind of action from the operatives will be same for the whole world?i think we will gather Investors again in this market and the Bull may come earlier.

Because the very reason why people are afraid in investing here because of the knowledge that there are too many scamming happening here and it is hard to trust each online offering but if the government will run against them>then the changes will happen and we will be bloomed again.

and these 27 million are impossible/very difficult to return to deceived users. Right?

It is a pity that there is no information about the scam site.

Even after Googling, several sources have never revealed the exchange. But based on the "popular" keyword, my educated guess would be Binance.

i see . the term is new to me but its definition is familiar and sounds like it was simillar to phishing  were a site is copied to a geniune site but once you login your credentials are going to be stolen  .

 i know how this stuff work but i dont know about the others yet  . this is serious case and its verry trending now  , now that people are carelessly visiting any links they see and most of them will just login if they saw something that is rewarding  but at the end they are still the one that cry and complain 

These crimes will happen more as people do not heed to request from exchanges to always check the URL and never trust any emails which have links to exchange login page.

I have bookmarked exchange URL on my browser and have also added a plugin to verify the URL.

Hmmmm

Why do we have a fresh topic about something that happened in 2019?

The article links to a Europol press release from a year ago:
25 June 2019
Press Release
https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/6-arrested-in-uk-and-netherlands-in-%E2%82%AC24-million-cryptocurrency-theft

There are even older topics here on bitcointalk about it:
European Authorities Arrest Six Suspects for €24 Million Crypto Fraud  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5159205.0)
Europol Arrests Six People Allegedly Behind $27 Million Bitcoin Theft (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158460.0)

Free market, and you can buy whatever name you want. Registrars possibly should be asked to immediately hand over any registration details for investigations, but you know, that's still doing it the wrong way to me. It's always awareness and education. Can't stop the criminals but you can preempt their moves. Even use that to enforcement advantage.

Anyway, yeah moves to make mainstream adoption easier have their flaws. Make internet so that nobody needs to understand how it works, so everyone can use it but few understand what they're getting themselves into. Same as all those custodial bitcoin wallets.

This is not just a BTC problem. People fall for similar FIAT related scams too on a regular basis. For example, a lady who lived close to my place was arrested because she ran a network with shady people that tricked people into transferring money using lottery wins as bait.

Greed is the primary reason why so many people(Educated and uneducated) fall for these scams on a regular basis. Scammers will continue trapping them creatively in different ways.

I totally agree with that. Contrary to popular belief, the crypto community is full of people that care about doing the right thing and do their best to fight scam. It's great that some governments are taking their side here as well by distinguishing scam and legit crypto business (they could just look in the other direction and say it's all shady). Crypto reputation is still probably quite bad in the eyes of people who barely know what it's about, so while news of such crypto scams might contribute to the wrong opinion, it's still necessary to clean the space. Congrats to the police, even if it's an old case like stompix says.

I hate this kind of situation cause it will only give some people that hate crypto currency the chance to talk more and this remind me the Coincheck heist scam (https://chaintalk.media/two-suspects-arrested-in-connection-with-the-2018-coincheck-heist-bitcoin-failing-the-safe-haven-litmus-test/amp/) which somehow affected crypto user level in Japan but i read later this year that two suspect are arrested which is good.

They seems to be among the group scamming people through the telegram using exchange support and investment strategy.

Typosquatting scam is a crime that is quite popular in the internet world. Therefore typosquatting scam is not only the cryptocurrency user
be a victim, but other e-currency users can also be victims such as paypal, perfect money, skrill, neteller, etc. Moreover, the 6 scammers
who have been caught are very professional, it can be seen from the number of victims reaching 4000 people in 12  different countries.
This includes major crimes in my opinion, I appreciate the police who managed to arrest them all. I recommend starting now more be careful
when accessing websites, check carefully the websites we visit. If we feel transferred to websites that we don't know, just close the website.

crime in any way bound to be caught even if a criminal was using the wallet bitcoin to store the results of their crimes makes the fake website a ploy to gain access to the wallet of the victim is a fraud extraordinary cases like this should continue in the process according to the law in the country Netherlands. swindler must the in-law weighing perhaps because many victims are exposed to their scam.

Hackers hack computer systems for knowledge and fun. Not for profit or damage they can cause.
These were just filthy scammers. Bitcoin is early stage and when there is bubble growing huge masses of non-technical people coming in.
They often fell victim sadly.

Scammers like these should be really behind bars, but mostly it is very hard for them to be traced and to be caught because they are also smart from hiding and stealing other peoples money.

These are the reasons why it is hard for us to convince or invite other countries to used and legalize cryptocurrency because they know that it is mostly being used in illegal activities such as scams, frauds, etc. Illegal activities like these are really ruining bitcoin's reputation, that is why they are still people who are afraid to invest in crypto.

I can't agree with that. For majority of hackers the motive is money. What do you think, what they live from and how they finance their activities? Yes, some do that for fun or even for politics or ideology but many are motivated by material goods. Bitcoin is not exception and it's very convenient because it's not so easy to trace it and despite it's not the same as on the begininig it still has a great deal of anonimity.

This is a big news regarding cyber crimes, making people aware that there are scams like this helps in creating general awareness that prevents further victims of this kinds of scam, not only does it make people aware but also the authorities and the technologies that they use for apprehending offenders is catching up to the standards real fast when it comes to cyber crime. Spoofing can be a really dangerous because websites can be easily duplicated, investing in it is requires large amounts of funds and risk to make the spoofed website more convincing, we can't blame people for falling for it though because they might be long time clients in the website and they trust it so much that they do not see something strange. The thing that we can do as an individual is spreading information about this kind of cyber crimes to as many people as much as you can, nothing beats being knowledgeable.

It is inevitable, crypto is associated with bad things and scam activities so why won't it be use in that area? 99% of altcoin are scam that should tell you something, to many people, crypto is a quick money grab space is the reason why we have so many scam project, hackers and the likes, and thanks to the authority they were caught, this also tell you that we still need regulated bodies for this space to work, those who are clamoring for decentralization don't have any idea what it will bring.

Reading through the OP article link and i find out that the issue happen a couple of weeks back but is good that that theft were catch by the authority.

You're right when yoh said the issue of hacker stealing from people wont stop but i want you to understand 40% of those people who are hacker victims are care less and it was human errors that led to most people been hacked.

I really salute the police who succeeded in revealing this cybercrime case. Moreover, this is a transnational crime and many victims. It is not easy to handle cases like this, moreover, cryptocurrency tends to anonymity.

Taking advantage at the expense of others is not commendable. Hacking cases like this can worsen the layman's view of cryptocurrency.
Basically, hackers always take advantage of every opportunity and carelessness of the wallet owner. Nothing is really safe on the internet, even if we implement multiple security, when we are careless, it will be exploited by hackers.

What?
Are you serious? some hackers use their expertise to harm others. That's a pity, it's not fair.

Great news even though even though this is just a small number but at least they have reduced out those scammers out there that do create phishing sites to scam out people.
Mimicking site specially exchangers is nothing new and the reason why people getting scammed continuously because they were careless enough not to search up everything
and just proceed without any caution and just realize that theyve done something wrong when they already lost up money.DYOR is been highly recommended but people
do still continue to commit the same mistake all over again and again.

I think that's not the point because the scammers are copying another legit website which I think people have already done researched in and that is how people was getting fooled. This is just one of those classic phishing. One people should look into is the credentials of the website and if the certificate is legit. That is how people will know if that is a fake website or not. Also, always save your website so you won't get fooled.

It is not uncommon to find people like that out in the world just trying to get money out from the people who do not know much about the matter.
Unfortunately it is not just the case of cryptocurrencies , it is the case of everything , therefore we cannot just put the blame on cryptocurrencies as a whole , It is we , who need to have a good knowledge and practice safe buying and selling over the internet .
The world is a crazy place if you show them you can be taken advantage of you will be taken advantage of .
Just be knowledgeable before doing something like that , don't just buy and sell Bitcoins and others cryptocurrencies through third parties when you can might as well do it by yourself , that is why it is decentralized.

Just for a count they are not copying other's website, they are simply altering the names of brand so it would look very much alike to the original one on which I think gullible people are always prone to falling into. This is a classic phishing scam that's why companies now are not just buying a single domain for their websites, they are also buying possible alteration of their website name. I haven't encountered being scammed by this kind of phishing website because I always use a bookmark in web pages.

Where the money is there and theft. I must have good equipment if I could track them down. The question is how did they come up? I bet they wanted to choose a gorilla. This page is a website but sometimes the administrator can't be trace

A group of scammers (hackers) who born to live with illegal earning. Impressive investigation by UK & Dutch police and they got their success after a long investigation process. This strict attempt will definitely bring some relief for worldwide crypto users and specially for them who are relatively new in this field.        

Every time these scammers mislead people by using well reputated exchange, wallet or other crypto related projects reputation. Specially similar looking phishing website is their real weapon. In most cases they make entry to users wallet through multiple phishing sites. Although people are getting aware about phishing websites but still many of us are not enough careful during web surfing.

In many cases some dishonest platform owners sell their users database to scammers which give them advantage to reach their target easily. Crypto currency is obviously a great invention for modern world generation but if you are not enough careful about your fund security then anything can happen.

I would like there to be more such situations and law enforcement agencies to arrest fraudsters around the world, and then we can hope for significant security of the cryptocurrency market and its purity from fraud.  if people are confident in the safety of their funds, they will be happy to study cryptocurrency and invest their money in it.  therefore, I only support any anti-fraud opportunities.

Same here, I also got scammed in Brussels, Belgium worth 25K USD. They are spoiling crypto industry.

Seriously, I don't know why people keep making this kind of mistake. Why is it that people don't check whether the site they are creating an account on is legit or not? There are lots of scammers out there and this is no longer a new thing. These ones have been caught, but are they the only ones? No they are not, there are still a lot of them out there doing the same and they will not all be caught, so this will continue.

It's up to the people to learn how to avoid these fake websites ,and they can do this by doing proper research before investing. Anyone that wants to create an account on any site should make sure that the website has the ‘https’ or padlock sign on the URL, if not, then you should proceed with care. Do your research and look for the right URL to the website.

This kind of crime called phishing the developers/programmers/ coder that is knowledgable into application development and HTML with the help of javascript, database, and keylogger to get the information of the users. There are a lot of issues like this and one of the common tactics of the people like this makes a website or platform that is duplicated to the real platform and they force their victim and users what are the personal information and by this, they can now make easily grab all of the information of the victim. Also by the help of the internet today it now makes easier to make a lot of this scam always be aware of the platform are browsing with because some of this included a phishing platform also you can see if the website is secured or not by the help of your browser if it is has a secured link near into the http link.


Even the trusted platform or website today it is easier to make a duplicate on it and they let you log in to their made platform and get access to your privacy still always be aware of the links you are clicking with because sometimes this is the cause why we got hacked or steal our information.

Yes, it's the same. They are copying the name, the brand and everything that the original have in order to fool the users so I stand by my argument that they are copying. Also, I don't think they are buying alternative domain for their website because that would confuse the users more. They are more like trying to promote their only website so the users can just bookmark it and don't be fooled by other fakes.


You just have to understand them. Not all people are computer literate and this type of people are the target of this scammers.

good advice :).

People have been doing similar attacks 20 years ago when there was no Bitcoin.

I remember this being done in games and chatrooms where the system would allow someone to register an account with "I" instead of "l" and the names would look the same.
Some services did not show spaces so you could make a name with a single space in the begining or end and use that identity to get some private information.

One way of fighting it is to use password managers. They won't recognize the site and won't give you the loging and password if the link doesn't match 100%.

I don't think this is a new trick for scammers but I do believe they have this creative plan a very long-time before doing this and somewhat it looks effective. TBH, I really amazed their doings but the only thing it is illegal and I have to condemn this action. 
Not only it happens in the Netherlands but also it happening globally. We can't totally stop this kind of activity for they have smart ass and they will still find a way to scam people.

I am glad that you posted this news in this forum. It raised my awareness about checking the website before using it. It also raised my awareness that before doing transactions in the internet like buying stuff or entering your card number, I must check the website and its certificate/s first. It is still sad  that people will do illegal things just for their sake/power/money (that's how the world works, there is good and bad.).

Illegal acts such as this, make us vulnerable everyday. It’s a good thing that the government of Netherlands is capable of tracing hackers and scammers such as this and I command their government. This just shows that we need to be careful everyday, make sure we change our passwords from time to time and make very strong passwords that are not easily guessed. This is another reason why we cannot be fully dependent on bitcoins because of incidents like this. One cannot relay all of their money to bitcoins. What if one day, for unfortunate reasons, your account was hacked and your government cannot trace the people who did it. You are left without anything. Let us all be careful everyday when going through transactions and let us make sure that we take all necessary precautions to secure our accounts. 

I really love seeing news like this because this criminals must be put behind bars and also
everyone that making the same bad things to crypto users,as this is
the reason why many people are afraid investing ere because of their activities.i am also hoping
that my country will have the same strong guts and perseverance to
make things happen because the spread of scamming and hacking is rampant in my place now
because crypto is being popular nowadays.

hello, this is great news for us cryptocurrency investors, a big round of applause for how they conducted the investigations that it was not easy to find them. I remain strongly convinced that the use of bookmarks is increasingly recommended and also the change of password from time to time with others that are always stronger

It is a good evidence or proof that Netherlands have a high security when it comes to transactions about cryptocurrency. They easily caught those scammers, and some countries are not that good at searching for those scammers that make the same crime over and over again. I'm so glad that it is possible for a country to increase and improve its security when it comes to cryptocurrency.

You need to become more careful and wise in choosing a platform that you will use because scammers are really flexible and they will do everything just to fool people and take their money.

People should really know how to determine if the websites are fake and if the platform that they are using is a fraud or not. Sometimes being observant is really necessary for us to prevent being scammed in a certain platforms, especially if it includes money and coins.

Scamming never ends. That’s why we really have to be very careful. I have come across these ‘typosquatting’ sites several times and not just in the cryptocurrency industry, I have seen it several times. That’s why people needs to be very careful when visiting a link and make sure that it belongs to the right site.

You can check the company you’re visiting their website on social media to be sure that the link you’re visiting is right. Apart from that you can check whether there is the keypad lock symbol at the URL. There are lots of procedures available these days to protect ourselves but people remain too ignorant still which usually results in losing their hard earned assets. I am not seeing any possible end for these.

People should really have at least that kind of knowledge when trying to look up for legit sites and as you mentioned about that SSL green padlock then thats one of the
indicators because majority of legit platforms now do have it.Also, having some initial search or in depth wont really cost an arm and leg but people are too lazy even doing
the simplest things which do really cause for them to get scammed even with a very obvious one but since due to lack or knowledge and some sort of common sense
then there are people who do really get victimized and this cycle would continue as long we do deal into a market which do involves money.

Very impressed with the authorities who were savvy enough to catch them. There is a lot of good advice being shared in these answers about how to avoid this happening but we are probably preaching to the choir on this board.

One thing crypto badly needs is more secure, user-friendly apps that make it VERY difficult for scammers to pull this type of thing off. As a former Network Administrator I can confidently say that you cant educate all users to the point of being smart enough to not fall for tricks like this, you have to remove the possibility that they can happen at all, especially when it comes to online finance.

this incident greatly worried us all. feel the safety of our funds in the market can not rest easy. when their potential is good, they take advantage of the situation to steal. this is totally unacceptable. The question in our minds today is whether our current assets are safe? or even under surveillance by thieves?
I hope something like this does not happen to all of us.