The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) to the Federal Court, alleging that the firm and its Irish branch engaged in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” by publishing scam celebrity crypto ads. Some users have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sophisticated and long running scams tied to the ad. The spotlight on Meta has heated up in Australia since the start of February, with Cointelegraph previously reporting that the ACCC was investigating the firm over allegedly fraudulent crypto ads. Aussie mining billionaire Andrew Forrest also took legal action against the …

Recently launched NFT project, Rare Bears, was hit with an attack, after a hacker posted a phishing link in the project's Discord channel, stealing nearly $800,000 in NFTs. Analysis from blockchain security firm Peckshield detailed that the attacker was able to steal 179 NFTs, including Rare Bears and other NFTs from various collections, including CloneX, Azuki, a “mfer” from artist sartoshi, and 6 LAND tokens used for The Sandbox metaverse. According to on-chain analysis, most of the NFTs were sold, netting the hacker 286 ETH, worth over $795,500, most of which was promptly put through Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer …

An unfortunate Bitcoin (BTC) user was duped out of 0.255 BTC, almost $10,000, due to malware running on their computer. Louis Nel, a tech blogger and crypto enthusiast, flagged the issue on Twitter, referring to his friend as ‘C.’ A friend sent 0.255BTC from his bitcoin wallet to an exchange. He copied and pasted the wallet address on his computer. After 4 hours he was worried when the funds did not arrive at the exchange... — Louis Nel (@LouisNel) March 14, 2022 Nel told Cointelegraph that C’s “Bitcoin was sent from Kraken to VALR, a South African exchange,” however, “malware …

In what ESPN Major League Baseball reporter Jeff Passan called the “biggest news day” of his life, scammers hijacked his Twitter account to promote an NFT giveaway. With the MLB and the Players Association (MLBPA) engaged in a long-winded deadlock over a labor deal that resulted in canceled games, Passan had just broken news regarding an important agreement between the two parties concerning the international draft. hey remember that time i got hacked on the biggest news day of my life — Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 10, 2022 However, with eyeballs waiting on the next development from Passan, his account …

Indicted by the United States Department of Justice in a $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme, BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani remains untraced following conviction. In a court filing on Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that the whereabouts of Kumbhani remains unknown. The SEC noted that Kumbhani’s last known location was in his native country India, but has remained untraced ever since the promoter for his BitConnect Ponzi scheme was charged by the SEC for defrauding American investors of over $2 billion. SEC in its filing noted that the convicted founder has most probably fled to a foreign country and “Kumbhani’s …

The founder of the infamous crypto exchange BitConnect, Satish Kumbhani, has been charged for allegedly misleading investors globally and defrauding them of $2.4 billion in the process. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a San Diego-based federal grand jury specifically charged Kumbhani for orchestrating the alleged Ponzi scheme via BitConnect’s “Lending Program”: “BitConnect operated as a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors. In total, Kumbhani and his co-conspirators obtained approximately $2.4 billion from investors.” Back in 2017 amid the hype, BitConnect (BCC) recorded an all-time high of $463.31 in trading price, which according …

The rise of community-oriented blockchain security companies may be making it more difficult for alleged bad actors to get away without a trace. Early Wednesday, CertiK issued a community alert regarding Flurry Finance, where its smart contracts were allegedly breached by hackers, leading to $293,000 worth of funds being stolen. Shortly after the incident, CertiK published the wallet addresses of the alleged perpetrator, the address of the malicious token contract, and a PancakeSwap pair address allegedly involved in the attack, leading to a warning issued on BscScan. While the firm audited the project's smart contracts, it appears that the exploit …

Creating a new crypto project is dangerously easy: One needs to generate a token, pick a ticker, market it to the crypto community through coin information websites like CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, and then get it listed on decentralized exchanges or the thousands of new centralized crypto exchanges that will do almost anything for money. Malicious entities can simply think of a catchy brand name or, better yet, grab a prominent brand, sauce it with additional keywords that could make crypto beginners think it’s related to its legitimate counterpart. Because of this, the crypto market is full of tokens that have …

Chainalysis data shows that 4068 criminal whales (roughly 4% of all whales) are hodling more than $25 billion worth of cryptocurrency between them. The blockchain analytics firm defines criminal whales as any private wallet that holds more than $1 million worth of crypto with over 10% of the funds received from illicit addresses tied to activity such as scams, fraud and malware. The data is from the “Criminal Balances” section of the Crypto Crime Report that explores criminal activity on the blockchain over 2021 and early 2022. The wide-ranging report also covers topics such as Ransomware, Malware, Darknet markets and …

Cybercriminals are using bots purchased on Telegram to trick users into giving them access to their cryptocurrency accounts. According to a report from cybersecurity firm Intel471, One Time Password (OTP) bots are “remarkably easy to use” and are relatively inexpensive to operate relative to the amount that can be earned from a successful attack. A Telegram bot known as ‘BloodOTPbot’ charges a monthly fee of just $300 to hackers to access. Fraudsters also have the option to spend an extra $20 to $100 on more phishing tools that target individual social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, financial services …

On Tuesday, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, platform OpenSea launched a server on Metalink to give verified owners of its collections a direct channel for support, feedback, and updates. In addition, OpenSea said it would no longer offer customer support over Discord DMs. Metalink is a collaboration app for NFT communities which offers users a place to view their collection's value and monitor its associated real-time transaction feed. In addition, channels hosted on Metalink are token-gated, meaning that proof of ownership of an NFT or social token is required to access content. According to OpenSea, the platform is making the switch …

“Rampant” issues relating to minting counterfeit nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have forced popular platform Cent to halt some operations. Founded in 2017, Cent kicked off as a “social network and informal platform for creative experimentation.” In 2020, the team also launched an NFT platform called Valuables to mint and auction iconic tweets. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, “just setting up my twttr,” sold for $2.9 million on the platform in March last year. On February 6th, the platform ceased NFT trading due to “a spectrum of activity” that "shouldn’t be happening." Cameron Hejazi, co-founder of Cent told Cointelegraph: “People in this …