According to an announcement from the FBI, 244 people have been identified as victims of fake cryptocurrencies. There are a lot of ways to lose money on the internet, but there are also a lot of people who end up paying a lot of money to hackers.
The bureau warned in its PSA that criminals have been contacting US investors, pretending to offer investment services, and convincing them to download fraudulent mobile apps, which the cyber criminals have used with increasing success to defraud the investors of their money.
In most cases, the scam seems to have been fairly simple: the crooks would convince a victim to download an app that used the same name and logo of a real company. The hacker would convince the person to make a deposit into a wallet that they said was associated with their new account. The criminals kept control of the deposited funds after the victims were unable to withdraw their money from the wallet.
The company that appears to have gone out of business is YiBit, and in one instance, the criminals posed as employees to get into the business. Criminals used a fake app to steal over $5 million from four different people.
In that case, hackers posed as employees of a fake company called Supay, which used the same name as a Australian company.
Over the course of just six months, a group of 28 people were fleeced of some $3.7 million by a group of criminals who pretended to be financial representatives. The FBI didn't give any more information.
It isn't new information. It has been known for a long time that fakecryptocurrencies are a way to lose money. In order to avoid this sort of financial disaster, the FBI suggests taking a number of precautionary measures, including being wary of "unsolicited requests to download investment applications" and taking steps to verify an app is legit. Abstinence is the best way to protect yourself from harm, according to Gizmodo.
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