Over the last several months, a number of people claiming to be Cointelegraph staff have paraded around LinkedIn and Telegram, as well as through email. These efforts often attempt to lure unsuspecting victims into sending payments in exchange for stories written about them or their companies and posted on Cointelegraph. Through work with blockchain analytics and Anti-Money Laundering company Coinfirm, Cointelegraph tracked some of this activity, shedding light on the situation. “Scammers are relatively effectively using the identities of trusted or influential people such as journalists in various ways to scam crypto holders out of funds," Coinfirm CMO and co-founder, …

For wine collectors, provenance is everything. With as much as 20% of all wine circulating the globe deemed to be fake, it’s hardly surprising. In days past, sniffing out a bogus burgundy required a good nose and an eye for detail. Now, thanks to blockchain technology, the problem is being resolved at its root — or should that be at the vine? Sommeliers, vintners, collectors and other connoisseurs of the red stuff go to great lengths to determine authenticity. From the weight of the bottle to eyeing anomalies in the year of production, right down to inspection of the bottle …

British journalist and TV personality, Piers Morgan, made his “big announcement” on Twitter on July 16 — but despite social media rumors about a potential Bitcoin endorsement it wasn’t crypto-related Instead Morgan said he’ll be launching a book related to a “liberal war” and COVID-19 called Wake Up. He’d earlier addressed the rumours he’d start providing Bitcoin advice (BTC) in the following tweet: UPDATE: No, I’m not Ghislaine Maxwell’s secret husband, nor am I transitioning, providing Bitcoin advice, quitting GMB, going vegan or replacing Jofra Archer in the Test match. All will be revealed at high noon. — Piers Morgan …

Per a July 15 judgment in the case of the SEC v. Abramoff, Jack Abramoff will pay $55,000 in disgorgement and interest for his involvement in promotion for AML Bitcoin. Abramoff will also be permanently barred from participating in any future securities offerings. The San Francisco court behind the ruling is seeing concurrent criminal charges, to which Abramoff has also pleaded guilty, but for which the judgment remains uncertain. The history of the case The SEC filed charges against Abramoff as well as Rowland Marcus Andrade at the end of June, claiming that AML Bitcoin presented false technological capabilities during …

A Texas resident was charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas on July 14. Allegations suggest that he fraudulently filed loan applications for $1.1 million through the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. He claimed he was seeking COVID-19 relief, but allegedly actually used the funds to purchase cryptocurrency. According to the allegations published by the U.S. Department of Justice, 29-year old Joshua Thomas Argires made false statements to financial institutions. Officials claim that Argires committed wire fraud by establishing a scheme to file the applications to the Small Business Administration, or SBA. Argires managed to submit …

Blockchain tracking and analytics platform, Whale Alert, revealed that over the past four years, scammers have stolen over $38 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC). New heights could be reached at the end of 2020 Whale Alert’s study, which relies on data from the crypto scam tracking site, Scam Alert, suggests that the popularity of dozens of different types of scams have been on the rise. Some of these include giveaways, sextortion, fake exchanges, fake ICO’s, Bitcoin recovery, video scams, fake tumblers, and malware. In 2017, scammers stole roughly $5M in Bitcoin from unsuspecting victims. In the first quarter of 2020, …

Wirecard’s recently-prosecuted former Chief Operations Officer, Jan Marsalek, may have had ties to Russian intelligence services. He also allegedly held secret documents about the use of a Russian chemical weapon in the U.K. According to the Financial Times, the former Wirecard executive bragged of his intelligence services’ ties in an effort to further integrate with London traders. Recovered documents contain specific data on the formula for the world’s deadliest nerve agent, known as Novichok. The chemical weapon was used in the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Julia on March 4, 2018. Germany on the …

The Chinese authorities dismantled a significant crypto-related scam in Wenzhou. The scheme amassed over 100 million yuan ($14.31 million), which was seized along with a number of luxury cars and villas. According to Toutiao, the gang has been operating since 2019 and primarily sought out victims through Telegram chat groups, including one called “Huobi Global Moving Brick Arbitrage HT Chinese Group Community.” ETH, BTC, and USDT stolen from victims The report states the scammers pretended to be investors who had benefited from an “investment scheme.” The scammers told their victims that all they had to do was send their cryptos …

The Cardano Foundation — the organization behind major cryptocurrency Cardano (ADA) — warned that a suspicious firm is trying to rake in investments by claiming it has contacts with the foundation. On July 9, the foundation stated that someone claiming to be from or contracted by crypto exchange BTCNEXT professes to personally know the Cardano core members as a way to reassure that investments will be safe. A BTCNEXT representative told Cointelegraph that the person in question does not have any relationship with the company. In fact, she said that they are familiar with the individual behind the claims and …

Jon Barry Thompson, the accused operator of a fraudulent crypto escrow service that defrauded $7 million from two customers, is expected to enter a guilty plea — with prosecutors aiming to finalize proceedings in September. "The parties expect to reach a disposition of this matter and respectfully request that the court set a control date in September 2020 for the entry of that disposition,” the prosecution wrote in a letter submitted to the court. In April, Thompson’s counsel, Peggy Cross-Goldenberg, indicated that both sides had made “substantial progress” towards disposition. Four counts of fraud Thompson was indicted in September 2019 …

Deutsche Bank was recently ordered to pay a $150 million fine for “significant compliance failures” in its relationship with alleged child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. The Bitcoin community on Reddit is highlighting this latest case of misconduct from major financial institutions. According to CNBC reporting on Tuesday, New York state financial regulators issued a $150 million penalty to the bank for offering banking services to Epstein despite being aware of his previous indictments. In the consent order under which Deutsche agreed to pay reparations, regulators show that the bank’s executives were aware of a memorandum that detailed Epstein’s long history …

In a July 7 interview with predecessor Jim Newsome, current Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Heath Tarbert ran down a list of pending concerns standing between cryptocurrencies and the long-awaited promised land of regulatory clarity. Securities regulation and the CFTC’s purview Tarbert was careful to outline the distinction between the work of the CFTC and its elder brother regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. The determination of whether a digital asset is a security is “the sole province of the SEC,” Tarbert explained. “If their determination is that it’s not a security then we can …