The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) has issued a warning against an alleged global scam scheme known as “Bitcoin Revolution,” according to an official document published today, Jan. 25. According to the Maltese regulator, the alleged crypto scam represents a typical get-rich-quick scheme, and operates through the website the-bitcoinrevolution.org and several other unnamed websites. The fraudulent entity also reportedly promotes its scheme by using advertising on unspecified social media platforms that redirects users to pages containing a number of prominent local personalities that claim to make large profits from crypto investments. The warning statement notes users are redirected to those …

Following international police collaboration, a 36-year-old individual suspected of the theft of over $11 million in IOTA, as well as fraud and money laundering, has been arrested on Jan. 24. Europol published a statement detailing the investigation on the day of the arrest. The suspect was reportedly arrested by United Kingdom’s South East Regional Organised Crime Unit, together with the Hessen State Police in Germany, the UK’s National Crime Agency and Europol, following a search warrant carried out in Oxford, U.K. The operation that lead to the man’s arrest — and the seizure of several of his electronic devices — …

Two leaders of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Komid were reportedly sentenced to serve jail time for faking exchange volumes, Korean crypto media outlet blockinpress reports on Jan. 18. The exchange’s CEO, surnamed Choi, received a three-year sentence, while another company leader with an unspecified role was purportedly sentenced to two years imprisonment for fraud, embezzlement and misconduct, the article notes. The charges reportedly outline a scheme where the exchange faked 5 million transactions in order to inflate the volume, which reportedly earned them $45 million. It is also suspected that the company used a bot to automatically create large …

Seven people who allegedly managed a fraudulent crypto investment scheme have been indicted in Taiwan, according to a report by English-language local media FocusTaiwan on Jan. 18. According to the report, citing local prosecutors, the defendants were charged with the violation of Taiwan's Banking and Multi-Level Marketing Supervision acts. The group was reportedly arrested on June 13 last year for allegedly operating a fraudulent Bitcoin (BTC) investment scheme. According to FocusTaiwan, the scheme promised investors yearly returns of up to 355 percent. Because of this promise — which reportedly has not been upheld since returns dwindled after April 24 — …

United States financial research company FactSet has filed a lawsuit against a company affiliated with professional trading service Blockchain Terminal (BCT), according to documents published by the Supreme Court for the State of New York County, Jan. 3. As stated in the lawsuit, in January, 2018, FactSet and the defendant — CG Blockchain — entered into an agreement to develop an interfacing application between the two firms' products. FactSet also granted a license to CG to use its products. According to the documents, CG had agreed to pay a minimum licensing fee of about $3.8 million, payable in three increments. …

2018 will long be remembered as the start of a significant cryptocurrency bear market, but the declining market still provided opportunities for scam artists to snag unwary investors. Given that 2017 was a breakout year for Bitcoin (BTC) and the likes, investors were clamoring to enter the fray as the price of cryptocurrencies skyrocketed toward the end of the year. With such a positive environment, businesses and developers looked to leverage blockchain technology for new projects, leading to a boom of new initial coin offerings (ICO) that has collectively raised more than $20 billion since the beginning of 2017. This …

The Federal Court of Australia has imposed a travel ban and frozen the funds of John Bigatton, a promoter of reported $2.6 billion Ponzi scheme Bitconnect, daily newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald reports on Jan. 5. Bigatton is reportedly listed as a director and shareholder of BitConnect International Plc and the only representative of Bitconnect Australia. Bigatton’s wife, Madeline Bigatton, is reportedly the sole director and shareholder of JB’s Investment Management, a company whose assets have been frozen, that is believed to be linked to Mr. Bigatton. According to the aforementioned article, Mrs. Bigatton went missing in March and has …

Nistor Vlad Călin, the founder of Romanian crypto exchange Coinflux, will be extradited to the United States, local media company Mediafax reports Jan. 4. As Cointelegraph reported in December, Călin was arrested earlier on a warrant from the U.S. for organized crime, money laundering and fraud allegedly conducted through his cryptocurrency exchange. Călin has been reportedly arrested by the U.S. authorities after a note from a secret service agent accused him of knowingly helping to launder proceedings of criminal activity committed on the territory of the United States. According to the most recent report by Mediafax, Anatol Pânzaru, Călin’s lawyer, …

A Georgia state senator has reported to jail over allegedly lying about the theft of cryptocurrency mining equipment worth $300,000, The Guardian reported Dec. 27. Republican Michael Williams, who originally reported the alleged theft in May, made a false police report and gave a false statement, court documents claim. Williams had said servers with a value of $300,000, which had been used to mine unnamed cryptocurrencies, had disappeared from his office premises, local daily news outlet Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Dec. 20. Prosecutors are considering the possibility that the theft never took place, and last month Williams was indicted by grand …

Bitcoin (BTC) has a substantial liberating potential, American mainstream newspaper Time reports on Dec. 28. The aforementioned article claims that “speculation, fraud, and greed in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry have overshadowed the real, liberating potential of Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention.” According to the article’s author, Bitcoin “can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange.” Alejandro Machado, a cryptocurrency researcher at the Open Money Initiative, reportedly said that the fee on a wire transfer from the United States to Venezuela can be as high as 56 percent. To circumvent such conditions, Venezuelans have reportedly turned to cryptocurrency, …

Recent research by the Wall Street Journal published Dec. 27 revealed that hundreds of cryptocurrency offerings showed signs of fraudulent activity, improbable returns and plagiarism. In the course of its research, the WSJ downloaded “white papers” of 3,291 cryptocurrency projects that announced an initial coin offering (ICO) from three websites — ICOBench.com, Tokendata.io and ICORating.com. A white paper is an informational document issued by a company that describes the company’s position, team biography, and technical specifics of a project, and is designed to be used as a marketing tool for potential investors. The reporters further conducted an analysis of the …

The development team behind altcoin Bitcoin Private (BTCP) has confirmed the creation of 2.04 million units of BTCP “that were never intended to exist on the blockchain,” according to an official statement published Dec. 24. On Dec. 23, digital assets analytics website Coin Metrics published a report revealing that during the import of Bitcoin (BTC) chain data, an additional 2.04 million units of altcoin BTCP — about $3.9 million at press time — were secretly minted. Per the project’s white paper, the total supply of BTCP is equal to around 20.4 million coins, while the secretly premined BTCP brought “the …