Bitcoin Forum

I thought large-scale scams only happened in countries where people aren't as educated about crypto, but I was surprised to see this happening in a fully developed country. And we're not talking small amounts either....it's in the billions.

Some of the schemes that scammed victims include Investment Fraud (which makes up the largest percentage), and many victims were the elderly, likely because they're not as familiar with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Scammers may find it easier to deceive them since they’re not as updated with technology. Another method used is the confidence scam, which is similar to romance scams. Scammers build trust and eventually convince victims to invest in crypto. According to the data, the most affected states are California, Florida, and Texas.

This data shows the bigger picture (see picture).

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/09/18/guwPb.png

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/09/18/guArv.png

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/09/18/guHWH.png

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With scams on the rise, do you think the current security measures are enough? Or what do you think needs to be improved to reduce scams?

source (https://dailyhodl.com/2024/09/11/fbi-says-scams-targeting-crypto-users-skyrocketing-in-severity-and-complexity-after-5600000000-lost-in-2023/)

Crypto education needs to be done to anyone who is starting out, even old people. I think this complaint was caused by my own fault. Not purely from the exchange. Because the industry is growing fast and many people are taking advantage to commit fraud.
In the end, the knowledge factor in every user is absolute the best prevention. They need to manage emotional steps to stay alert and watch out for all potential scams.  They should be more thorough on everything related to assets. There will be more and more new fraud models. Because fraudsters will continue to try to take advantage of security loopholes to gain profits without having to work hard.

Even in a fully developed country, you can’t expect everyone to be well educated about crypto or the internet or scams in general. Actually even those that are relatively aware of crypto and knows a basic deal can still get scammed. A lot of scams these days are very well thought out and well planned.
Education should be at forefront in my opinion. If everyone was literate when it comes to internet and technology we would have lesser scams. It would not lessen the scammers but it will help people avoid basic scams and hacks.

Please read the source carefully, this has nothing to do with exchanges, it’s purely a scam, usually "Investment Fraud" where someone offers something too good to be true. Most of the victims are elderly people who aren’t tech-savvy but have significant savings, making them vulnerable. Another common scam is the "romance scam," where they’ll make you fall in love and later convince you to invest in their crypto scam.

Wow! I didn't imagine it would be like this. Given the way things are going, it makes sense that regulators are targeting cryptocurrencies.


I would ban all of them except bitcoin. But without being so radical, what I would do is strict supervision and regulation, assuming that when shitcoins are launched it will be a pump and dump scheme, and that they will have to prove otherwise if they want authorisation.

Why elderly are the highest and biggest victims? because the criminals know elderly are richer than the younger one because they saves more money.

Why it's happening in first world countries? because that's where the money is.

Thing needs to be improved in order to reduce scams in cryptocurrency is the government should encourage their citizen to open and read users' posts in this forum, I don't see any users in this forum give bad suggestions, if they can stick what users in this forum saying, they will be safe.

The data shows that the amount lost to this crypto scam increased with the age of the victims. People under 20 years were not won't invest much into these scam projects since they don't earn much or depend on their parents. From age 20 to 50 have more knowledge about crypto investment and might not invest much since they also have to spend on other needs. Retirees are more prone to these scams because they lack basic knowledge, can be easily convinced and have access to more money. Some of them just got their insurance or retirement benefits. So they can easily fall prey to these scammers that come in different forms.

Maybe this year's report will be greater considering the recent introduction of the telegram crypto platforms and the fast spread of crypto awareness in some parts of the world. The current US elections have brought the issue of crypto to the forefront of the US political space and I am sure scammers will also take advantage of it.

Stringent security measures will lead to more crypto restrictions, which is not good for the decentralized operations of the sector. Crypto education and awareness should be increased by the government and other agencies. Monitoring of the altcoins industry is very essential and developers of scam projects should face the wrath of the law if convicted.

You are talking about social engineering scams, that require the victim to be psychologically manipulated and deceived. What kind of security measures do you want? The best security measure would be to teach the people about cryptocurrencies and to tell them about the various types of scams and how to spot them. Elderly people are the most vulnerable demographic to all kinds of scams, not just crypto scams. I'm sure that elderly people represent the biggest number of fiat scam victims, not just crypto scam victims.
I don't think that crypto scams have "exploded" or something. Your thread title is a little bit clickbaity and overdramatic.

These are not scams where people go and steal cryptocurrency, they are the kind of technical support scams where the perpetrator makes the victim convert their fiat to crypto and send it to them.

I just thought I might point that out to you as a correction because it otherwise makes no sense how there are more crypto scams this year, when there's barely more users than last year.

Older adults who are probably retired or close to retirement are the targets for this. And these are mostly people who live alone without any kid or any spouse to talk to when they receive enticing emails on device via any of the social media platforms. One video I watched was about a elder man. He lost over $750,000 to a crypto investment scam. LinkedIn in used to be a place where folks can trust but now, it is full of scammers and the scumbags of the earth who pretend to be honest people. After they sent him an email on LinkedIn with an offer for an investment opportunity with an online trading company, they told him two things that I think he liked - one the returns on his investment was about 21 - 24% and two, he would be able to withdraw his investment capital. This they did look legitimate. When he knew that he had been scammed was when of course he tried to withdraw his money and profit and he received a notification that his account is flagged for money laundering, he reached out to the company and then they demanded for some money to sort it out after which they'll send it back to him. At this point he already got the message - he's never going to get his money back. We see this also happen in some fraudulent crypto casino as too. Also do your own research and ask a lot of questions before making any crypto investment.

It is not possible to draw conclusions using these results because they are reports and not survey research, just like saying that the crime rate has increased in an area can be justified by the increase in the population in that area, or the absence of police, or a good indicator indicating an increase in the wealth of the population or a bad indicator of an increase in poverty, and so on. Based on the report, I can say that it indicates an increase in the use of cryptocurrencies or a weak cyber infrastructure or other reasons.

The report from the source is tilted FBI Publishes 2023 Cryptocurrency Fraud Report (https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-publishes-2023-cryptocurrency-fraud-report). So the report was based on data collected last year from 69,000 complaints the FBI received.

I’m also surprised by this data. I haven’t heard about many big scams recently. Other than Bitconnect and FTX, I haven’t really heard of any large scams in quite some time. I guess it makes sense as Bitcoin becomes more popular there are more smaller scams occurring, but I have a feeling next year when the price goes crazy the scams will be at an all time high.

Don't forget, people also want to get rich overnight.

If people are very strict with their money meme coins won't be doing so well today, for someone to hit it big with meme coin they need to diversify their money in many meme coins, even when they know that most meme coins are scam, I don't feel pity for these people, they look for money through I'll gotten ways.

Even those who have good knowledge about crypto are into stupid things in crypto ways, hitting the jackpot is the majority of investors' goal in this space, it is clear why they will keep losing money, this is why only very few people make it big by investing in crypto.

I know that older people are victims too but must of them don't even know how to operate crypto wallets, they find it too complicated, I believe the majority of newbies today are youths and they are mostly too desperate to make money, they lack patience.

Probably with fiat too, but there's a reason why scammers prefer using crypto, especially Bitcoin....because they know it entices people. Bitcoin's "zero to hero" investment story draws them in.

I could actually recommend an interesting movie about an elderly person getting scammed. It's an action film starring Jason Statham. You might enjoy it!

The Beekeeper (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15314262/)  ;D ;D ;D

Judging on the graph, it does look like it exploded for me.


The data was taken last year, probably over a full year. This isn’t about crypto scams like token or altcoin projects; otherwise, it wouldn’t be in this section of the board. But anyway, as the report mentions, a big portion of these scams are "investment scams," which is very common. I don’t think this falls under technical support scams, but no matter what you call it, the numbers are still pretty alarming to me.

It has nothing to do with a country being small or big, scams are happening everywhere. Thanks to internet, anyone can scam you from Asia while you are enjoying your coffee in America. Also, most of the adults who are thinking about Crypto as a retirement strategy will be the one getting in trouble with the Investment Frauds as the young generation is busy with Shitcoins or Altcoins.

Investment fraud is taking much money from the victim especially for those who ages above 60 because at that age, those people getting old and they don't know much about Bitcoin. They think that all investment is the same but they don't research for more to check which investment that is real and fake. Many elderly people will say yes when they have been offered the investment by their friends so they will use their money to join in that investment program. They think that everything will be fine and they can make a profit from that investment because their friends also join in the same investment program. That will also happen to all people but the difference is young people can research for more to find the truth of the investment program.

Its important that this crypto education will be done soon since the industry became more larger and it leave something impression to new or old guys that this is the way to earn money online. This thinking has been commonly exploited by scammers that's why its good that they will be notified all those schemes used by this criminals to scam them.

Right now we see a lot of scamming issues keeps happening and even if the methods used by scammers are those classic ones still they succeed since there's still a lot of people doesn't know about the intentions and methods used by this people. So if we have this crypto related scams education for sure that this kind of unfortunate incident will lessen. But since this is not happening yet I guess simple reminder to people around you and teach them about those to good to be true usual offers and other scam techniques is useful since for sure people will hear this information will share this to other one and lots of people in your reach will know and will be save from scams.

The government is strict about enforcing its rules, even fining Binance and other exchanges for violations, but these things still happen within their territory. We can’t deny that there are plenty of scammers in Asia, and in our country, we have this POGO thing, which is often called a crypto scam hub. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re behind some of the scams targeting victims in different places like the US.

POGO has also been reported for being involved in investment and love scams, which are very similar to what’s happening in the US. I’m just not sure if the US was a target since the reports mainly mention China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but it’s possible a different syndicate is focusing on the US, using the same tactics.

Doesn't surprised me at all, it's that that criminals just moved from fiat->crypto and then continue with their scamming that targets the elderly. I don't know about you, but there are some channels in Youtube that really hunt this scammers in a certain country.

And some of this hunters are putting a lot of efforts to track them down. Unfortunately, that country is not cooperating with them and so it is just like a cat and mouse game. If ever they shout down a criminal ring, another one will pop up and just move to another region and continue with their scams.

No, large-scale scams don't happen in poor countries, the reality is the opposite. Large-scale scams happen from poor countries. There are call centres in poor countries that pay abnormally high salaries to workers but it's an affiliate-based system, the more people you scam and the higher the scammed amount is, the higher your salary will be. Sadly, call centres are unregulated and there are rumours that government officials are protecting them behind the scenes but recently there was a big attack on call centres by German and US authorities and I'm happy many of them got closed.
Like you said, they are scamming old people, pensioners that live in America and European countries. They call them, tell them many lies and sadly, elders fall into the scam. They ask for their debit card numbers and many elder people have no idea that it's very dangerous to tell someone those numbers. They are lying that Netflix does this so there is no need to worry and blablabla.

I thought one of the reasons why the FBI was calling for regulation of the cryptocurrency market and its exchanges, is due to the rising cases of scams and fraud that has made many lose millions.

I would like to think that the free world is more developed than many countries and if the FBI should have a data with such high rate of scammers within, I wonder the plight of those third world countries, who still use and understand cryptocurrency and do not have nearly up to the quota of security protocols of these big states in America alone.

More than just the younger generations, is the older generation like our old parents, older relations, older friends and older guardians who we know should be enlightened and re-enlightened on not only crypto currency market, but the economic and financial investment market happenings, in case they already made an investment that we do not know about and may have probably forgotten they had.

This year, I think the rate at which people fall into crypto scams has reduced compared to the previous years.
 
Now all I see very common is a romance scam in which the scammer targets their victims, pretending to be someone else, to make them fall in love with them and build trust. Crypto currency is the only means used in sending the payment, but the scam itself is not a crypto scam.
 
If the rate at which those scams are going on is going to be reduced, there should be some kind of education to educate the people on how not to trust those they meet online, how to identify scammers, and means to avoid them, but with the way clone video apps are popular nowadays, it's even easier for scammers to convince their victims that they are who they claim to be. 

That's the sad reality: most scams emigrate from third-world countries such as Nigeria or India, the well-known to everyone call centers that disguising themselves as Microsoft support that either extract money by scamming them with fake "security" services or just straight up wipe their bank accounts. You'll also see them identify as IRS and even use spoof numbers to appear they're calling from a US number. There's even a few Youtube channels chasing them down, one of which is Pleasant Green.

However, this has little to do with cryptocurrencies. Investment fraud, which the OP mentioned accounting for the majority of scams, also existed with fake stock market brokers a few years ago. Such scams always existed; it just became easier for them because cryptocurrencies are extremely mainstream and well-known nowadays; thus, people are easily fooled.

The year isn’t over yet, so we can’t say for sure. It usually depends on market sentiment.....like when things are bullish, people get more eager to invest, and that’s when scammers (like those running these kinds of scams) take advantage.

Unfortunately, they label it a "crypto scam" whenever it involves crypto. Here in my area, a lot of people got scammed by HYIP schemes that used Bitcoin, but they end up saying Bitcoin itself is the scam. Bitcoin gets dragged into it because of the scammers, but if people did their due diligence before investing, they probably wouldn’t have been scammed.

The term "crypto scam" has a broad meaning (it covers all scams involving crypto), while "scam crypto projects" is more specific. The latter focuses on fraudulent projects within the crypto space.

That’s the trend, most scammers take advantage of Bitcoin’s popularity. The fact that so many get scammed only means one thing; Bitcoin has a good reputation because people believe that if they invest, they’ll get a good return. But because they get too confident, they forget to do their research before investing.

The growth of cryptocurrency fraud is not surprising and most likely natural. Fraudsters are attracted here not only by the concentration of large sums of money, but also by relative anonymity, the ability to commit fraud from anywhere on our planet and great difficulty for law enforcement agencies if such frauds cover the territory of several countries at the same time.

The growing popularity of cryptocurrency leads to the fact that many people who are very poorly versed in it and can be easily deceived enter this market. Fraudsters take advantage of this. In addition, states, as a rule, have not yet adopted the necessary regulations to regulate the circulation of cryptocurrency and this occurs in a semi-legal form, which makes it very difficult to protect victims from fraudulent activities.

The given figures for damage from fraudulent activities in the amount of 5.6 billion dollars, this is, apparently, only in the United States, and in total this figure is immeasurably greater. In the meantime, it will only continue to grow.