French Regulatory Agency Sees 14,000% Surge in Crypto-Related Scam Enquiries Since 2016

The French stock markets regulator AMF has seen over a 14,000% surge in enquiries related to fraudulent crypto offers in 2018 as opposed to 2016, the agency wrote in a new annual report released May 7.

In the report, the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) specified that the number of enquiries associated with crypto-related scams online has surged to over 2,600 in 2018 from only 18 similar enquiries back in 2016.

With that, the amount of fraudulent online offers in other industries such as foreign exchange (forex) and binary options have significantly decreased, the AMF noted. As such, fraudulent offers concerning investment in forex and binary options triggered a total of 3,768 enquiries in 2016, with the number having decreased to 968 enquiries in 2018.

Fraudulent offers online in forex, diamonds, and cryptos chart. Source: AMF

According to the report, the AMF has issued public warnings against 118 bad crypto-related actors starting from March 2018, while the overall number of warnings has accounted for 154.

In April, the AMF issued a public warning against Kuvera France, a company offering training courses and software for trading crypto and investing in forex markets.

Previously, Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority updated a blacklist of crypto-related websites associated with fraud to a total of 120 websites.