The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has charged William Koo Ichioka for defrauding investors of tens of millions of dollars by claiming to be a digital asset and foreign exchange (forex) trader. According to an official statement, the CFTC filed a complaint against Ichioka in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District...Read More
Lux Vending – doing business as Bitcoin Depot – has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office of McLennan County, Texas, accusing it of unlawfully seizing $15,000 from a BTC automated teller machine (ATM). The authorities confiscated the amount to compensate an elderly victim who had become a victim of a cryptocurrency scam. Bitcoin...Read More
A joint investigation by the FBI’s Money Laundering Squad and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations led to a 75-month prison sentence for 64-year-old Arizona entrepreneur Reginald Fowler. A former co-owner of the professional American football team Minnesota Vikings, Fowler has also been asked by the court to pay a forfeiture of $74.02 million and restitution of...Read More
A new report by blockchain security company Beosin revealed that the total amount of crypto assets lost to exit scams and rug pulls was higher than the amount stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects through exploits and attacks last month. Beosin also discovered that losses from the exploits in May were down 79% compared to...Read More
Long-term gold proponent and arguably the most popular full-time Bitcoin basher – Peter Schiff – has had his Twitter account comrpomised. According to Blockfence, Peter Schiff’s Twitter account has been compromised and hijacked. The perpetrator already published a tweet that leads to a phishing website. It’s advised not to click or interact with the link....Read More
The Twitter account belonging to OpenAI CTO Mira Murati was hacked on Thursday, and used to promote a scam crypto token supposedly backed by the company. The tweet stayed online for roughly an hour, garnering 80,000 views from platform users before being taken down. Another Scam AI Token The hacker promoted a fraudulent airdrop for...Read More
It appears that the DeFi industry continues to be a prime target for hackers. On the morning of May 28th, another exploit took place, this time taking aim at liquidity platform Jimbos Protocol. Jimbos Protocol got exploited today – May 28th. According to an update by PeckShield, the hack resulted in a loss of around...Read More
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning on fake job ads that lure people to Southeast Asia, where “victims are held against their will and forced to commit international crypto scams on unsuspecting victims.” These scam mills usually put up ads on social media and lure their victims by promising well-paid...Read More
The Twitter account of American music producer and DJ Steve Aoki has been compromised and used to conduct a phishing scam that led to the loss of at least $170,000 worth of crypto assets. According to a Friday tweet by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, the attacker utilized their illicit access to Aoki’s account to execute the...Read More
A United States Court has granted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging Binance’s involvement in a pig butchering scam that stole roughly $8 million from its victim. According to a recent filing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Judge Amos Mazzant granted Binance’s motion to dismiss the case for...Read More
Months after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged eight people allegedly involved with orchestrating the $45 million CoinDeal scam, the Department of Justice has gone after another party. A 57-year-old resident of Las Vegas, Bryan Lee, was charged with conspiring with the main culprit believed to be behind the scam that defrauded over 10,000 investors....Read More
The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court ruled that the Vietnamese residents – Ho Ngoc Tai and Tran Ngoc Hoang – will spend their lives in prison for kidnapping an individual and stealing $1.5 million worth of bitcoin from him. 14 other people who also took part in the crime received sentences between 9 and...Read More
Developers of decentralized exchange (DEX) Swaprum have drained $3 million in ether (ETH) tokens from the protocol in an apparent rugpull, otherwise known as an exit scam. The exchange, launched on the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, offers high farming rewards, low swapping fees, and potential earnings of up to 100% annual percentage yield (APY). Swaprum...Read More
Fuelled by hype and hysteria, memecoins went from an obscure and bizarre niche to a massive gambling vehicle that made people millionaires overnight. PEPE is the latest sensation that captured the imagination of some of the most insatiable degens in the space. This particular frog-themed coin continued to ascend to dizzying heights as FOMO engulfed...Read More
The People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City reportedly brought to court 16 Vietnamese who might stand behind a $1.5 million crypto robbery and kidnapping. Interestingly, two of the defendants are former police officers. Vietnam is one of the global leaders in terms of cryptocurrency adoption. Despite its rising popularity, the government has not imposed...Read More
ZachXBT has accused several influencers of engaging in pump-and-dump scams and profiting from the misery of others. This time, the on-chain sleuth has targetted yet another figure who goes by the name ‘DannyCrypt,’ for allegedly dumping on his followers. The crypto influencer in question was accused of receiving 2% of the supply of a certain...Read More
Over 1,000 human trafficking victims, who were forced to toil up to 18 hours a day for cryptocurrency scams, were rescued by the Philippine National Police (PNP). The 12 suspected ringleaders were arrested by the authorities and will be charged with human trafficking. This includes seven Chinese nationals, four Indonesians, and a Malaysian. Crypto Scam...Read More
The British Columbia Securities Commission has accused ezBtc, a defunct Nanaimo-based cryptocurrency platform, and its founder David Smillie, of perpetrating a multimillion-dollar securities fraud scheme. The commission alleged that Smillie and his crypto firm lied to customers about the platform and diverted their assets to online gambling sites. ezBtc Allegedly Diverted $13M in Customer Assets...Read More
The Casablanca Court of Appeals ruled that the 21-year-old Frenchman – Thomas Clausi – will serve an 18-month prison sentence for orchestrating a crypto scheme. The defendant must compensate the victims of his scam and pay a fine of 3.4 million euros ($3.7 million) to customs authorities. Crypto fraudsters have been quite inventive recently, draining...Read More
According to the blockchain and smart contract security firm Certified Kernel Tech (better known as CertiK), crypto-related exploits, hacks, and scams in April resulted in losses worth $103 million. The figures for last month are a lot less than the $211 million worth of digital assets which wrongdoers siphoned throughout March 2023. Summarizing the Incidents...Read More
The United States Department of Justice notified that the former chief financial officer of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) was sentenced to three years in prison after embezzling $5 million. The exec used to trade cryptocurrencies and “meme stocks” with the stolen funds. According to the official press release, US District Judge Paul A....Read More
Spain’s authorities reportedly busted a criminal organization that orchestrated a massive cryptocurrency scam. The wrongdoers embezzled more than €100 million ($110 million) from over 3,000 people across the globe. The Guardia Civil arrested a suspect in Mallorca considered a gang member. Operation ‘Mandoa’ Turned Successful A local media outlet informed that the Guardia Civil (the...Read More
Faruk Fatih Özer – the founder of crypto exchange Thodex – has been extradited to his home country, Turkey, where he faces charges of fraud and operating a criminal organization. Thodex was one of the largest crypto exchanges in Turkey. It later turned out to be an exit scam, with Özer disappearing with $2.6 billion...Read More
A resident of Scotland’s county Lanarkshire was left with a £150,000 debt (almost $190,000) after falling victim to a cryptocurrency fraud. She is now forced to sell her home to avoid additional financial issues. The woman sought support from Advice Direct Scotland and the local police, but the entities could not help her retrieve the...Read More
A 55-year-old resident of Hong Kong has reportedly fallen victim to an online cryptocurrency investment scam and lost her entire savings worth nearly HK$7 million (almost $900,000). Such fraud cases have become quite frequent in the region lately. A study estimated that Hong Kong investors had lost around $50 million during the first half of...Read More
Cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue was exploited today, with the perpetrator being able to withdraw approximately $23 million worth of cryptocurrency. The exploit was officially confirmed. In a Twitter thread posted today, Bitrue revealed that the exchange suffered a “brief exploit” in one of their hot wallets earlier. 1/4: We have identified a brief exploit in one...Read More
A 23-year-old professional with a major tech company who lost nearly Rs. 30 lakh (approx. $37,500) in the cryptocurrency market tried to commit suicide by jumping off a river bridge in Kolkata, India. A cab driver who noticed the young man on the Vidyasagar Setu (bridge) alerted the nearby police about his intentions. Borrowed to...Read More
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seized $112 million in cryptocurrencies previously drained through the so-called “pig butchering” scams. One particular account based in Los Angeles contained more than $66 million worth of digital assets. That type of fraud has become increasingly popular recently. An investigation assumed that many shell companies in the United...Read More
A couple from Toronto became the latest to fall victim of a cryptocurrency scammer. They lost around $300,000 in an elaborate scheme. However, in this case, law enforcement agents managed to recover a “significant portion” of the lost funds and returned them to the victims. Another Crypto Scam in Canada The Toronto Police Service announced earlier this...Read More
A study conducted by the cybersecurity company Kaspersky determined that approximately a third of the US crypto investors have had some portion of their stash stolen by hackers. Bad actors usually con victims by luring them to enter a counterfeit website or urging them to join a dubious investment platform. ‘People Need to Take Care...Read More
