Unsuspecting investors have lost $16 billion by buying into crypto projects they thought would be the next best thing. And that money is nearly impossible to recover. As the crypto industry established itself as a disruptor of currency and technology and as Bitcoin (BTC) began to gain traction in 2017, scammers took advantage of naïve investors interested in getting involved. Related: Crypto Crimes Rated: From the Twitter Hackers to Not Your Keyser, Not Your Coins Spotting the scams The crypto startup market is growing and expanding every day. There are startups working to create alternative banking opportunities, which raise capital …

Less than a month after a Cape Town High Court granted a provisional order of liquidation against Mirror Trading International, the liquidators are seeking expanded powers to investigate the company and recover investor funds. According to Herman Bester, one of the four appointed liquidators, the team needs to operate across multiple jurisdictions to ascertain the full scope of MTI’s operation. The liquidators are currently attempting to trace all the company’s assets. After this process, the team will submit a formal report to the court indicating the likelihood of successfully returning investor funds to the victims of the alleged scam. According …

Livecoin, a lesser-known Russian cryptocurrency exchange, has abruptly halted operations in the aftermath of an alleged hacker attack on Christmas day. According to Livecoin’s main page, the exchange has suffered a “carefully planned attack” causing the platform to lose control of all of its servers, backend and nodes. The exchange urged its customers to stop using its services including deposits, trading and API. “We were not able to stop our service in time. Our news channels were compromised as well. At the moment, we partially control frontend, and so we’re able to place this announcement," Livecoin’s main page reads. Livecoin …

A major Bitcoin (BTC) ad scam involving unauthorised images of Australian celebrities who seemingly promoted fake investment schemes is allegedly coming from Russia, according to a new report. Fraudulent Bitcoin ads capitalizing on Australian celebrities like Dick Smith and Andrew Forrest are part of an organized global business that uses at least five addresses in Moscow, an investigation by The Guardian asserts. On Dec. 13, The Guardian published a report providing more details about a major Bitcoin ad scam that has run on news websites since at least 2018. As previously reported, the scam involved fake articles using unauthorised images …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has brought 56 enforcement actions against initial coin offerings, blockchain and digital asset-related companies since July 2017. On Nov. 16, the SEC released a report on the commission’s selected accomplishments during chairman Jay Clayton’s tenure from May 2017 until November 2020. As part of the 28-page report, the regulator mentioned the SEC’s efforts to combat “cyber-related misconduct” including violations by companies involved in the crypto industry. According to the report, the SEC brought 56 cases involving attempts to defraud investors through the use of digital asset securities as well as violations of the …

Decentralized finance yield farming platform Yearn Finance has a doppelganger that is tricking visitors into sharing the private keys of their cryptocurrency wallets. The scam website of Yearn Finance perfectly copies almost every aspect of the original yearn.finance website down to its design, website copy and even domain name. The scammers behind the website chose the domain name “yaerm.finance,” making it look extremely similar to “yearn.finace.” They have also promoted their landing page for the search keyword “yearn finance” so it shows up on top of the search results when people search for the actual real website. Once a user …

This morning, millionaire broker and noted Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff awoke to find his bank under renewed scrutiny due to an international criminal investigation. According to reporting from Australian newspaper The Age and The New York Times, the J5 -- a joint task force of tax authorities from major Western governments convened in the wake of the bombshell publication of the Panama Papers -- have placed “hundreds” of accounts at Schiff’s Puerto Rico-based Euro Pacific Bank under investigation for tax evasion and other financial crimes. The reports detail what appears to be a comically inept organization responsible for harboring the …

The New York Department of Financial Services, or NYDFS, has released a lengthy report analyzing the impact of July’s high-profile Twitter hack, which resulted in the theft of over $118,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC). Far beyond the immediate material impact, the NYDFS states that the incident exposed deep cybersecurity weaknesses of a publicly-traded social media company valued at $37 billion and counting over 330 million active monthly users. The discovery has serious consequences in light of the platform’s ever-expanding influence on both financial markets and the political sphere. Two key sections of the NYFDS report, published on Oct. 14, tackle …

Electronics entrepreneur Dick Smith — who is a household name in Australia — has threatened a lawsuit against a major media outlet after it hosted ads that linked to fake articles suggesting Smith is promoting a fake Bitcoin and crypto investment scheme. According to an Oct. 8 report from The Australian, the legal team for millionaire Dick Smith is threatening defamation proceedings against The Guardian Australia after discovering the advertisements. The ads themselves do not feature cryptocurrency directly, however they link to stories featuring written interviews with celebrities such as Smith who purportedly made a killing by investing in crypto. …

Fraudsters are taking advantage of the irreversible nature of crypto transactions, says MyChargeBack’s vice president of global operations, Michael Cohen. When Bitcoin (BTC) was first envisioned, one of its selling points was the fact that it was offering better protection to retailers than credit cards. In one of his earliest emails — from November 10, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto parried a complaint from an early adopter James A. Donald, who lamented the fact that Bitcoin transactions are not instantaneously final: “Instantant non-repudiability is not a feature, but it's still much faster than existing systems. Paper cheques can bounce up to a …

On Friday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission made a fraudster pay back $7.4 million to investors while vowing to protect the Bitcoin market. Per the CFTC's announcement, James McDonald, Director of the commission's enforcement division, said The CFTC will continue working to protect our markets, including the burgeoning markets for digital assets such as Bitcoin, from fraudulent schemes, and will work in parallel with our criminal law enforcement colleagues where appropriate. Today's announcement concerns Jon Barry Thomson, who pleaded guilty to commodities fraud for convincing two investors to send him over $7 million for a Bitcoin investment scheme that never …

Last Friday night, crypto YouTuber Ivan on Tech messaged me on Twitter. Shortly into our conversation, he graciously offered me an investment opportunity in “Bitcoin trading/mining”, courtesy of a platform that he alleged was associated with Binance. In reality, however, I was being approached by an Ivan impersonator, peddling a crypto affinity scam. The platform "Ivan" advertised, called Cryptobinance, has no affiliation with the actual Binance exchange, a representative of the company told Cointelegraph. But I played along with the scammer to see what additional information could be elicited from him. I told him that I was impressed by his …