Millionaire philanthropist Bill Pulte has given away close to $150,000 this year in an attempt to promote the mass adoption of cryptocurrency. However, some critics are concerned that he may inadvertently be providing legitimacy to the masses of scammers who use fake giveaways to con new users out of crypto. Others believe it’s a ‘self serving’ attempt to build his public profile. Pulte has nearly 3,000,000 Twitter followers, up from the 10,000 he had in July 2019. In a July 9 post on Pulte’s Twitter account, the millionaire said he would be donating funds through CashApp to users who retweet …

Sohrab Sharma, one of the co-founders of cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech facing charges related to a $25 million initial coin offering scam, is reportedly planning to plead guilty. According to a July 13 report from Bloomberg, Sharma may avoid a November trial date as his lawyers told a federal judge he would be interested in changing his plea. The announcement comes after Sharma’s associate Robert Farkas was convicted of conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud on June 16. Farkas faces up to 87 months in prison and a $250,000 fine. A history of scamming The U.S. Department of Justice …

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, …

Cardano is warning the public against scams promoting a fake Cardano (ADA) giveaway. In a tweet, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said a Youtube account has been using a keynote address he made to promote a fake giveaway. “It has come to my attention that a scam has been floating around using my conference keynote to promote a giveaway https://youtu.be/MqeEhezvI1s this is a scam. Please report it to YouTube. We will take legal action if we can against those responsible.” The price of ADA went up by more than 85% in less than two weeks from $0.074 to $0.137. Cardano is …

One of four men charged with defrauding investors of more than $722 million through a long-running cryptocurrency mining scheme has pleaded guilty to charges against him. The man, a 35-year-old Romanian programmer called Silviu Catalin Bacali, was arrested in Germany in December 2019. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud as well as a conspiracy to offer and sell unregistered securities. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Three others — Matthew Brent Goettsche, Russ Albert Medlin, Jobadiah Sinclair Weeks and Joseph Frank Abel — were charged in …

Daily trade volume on the decentralized exchange (DEX) and liquidity pool Uniswap has rallied to $25 million on the back of a strong first day of trade for the digital asset protocol Ampleforth’s AMPL. ETH-AMPL currently comprises Uniswap’s top pairing by volume, with nearly $2.9 million in trade activity over the past 24 hours. The past day comprises the second-strongest on record for Uniswap V2, however, the first incarnation of the exchange has seen brief spikes into the hundreds of millions three times in the past 12 months. Uniswap is quickly emerging as a leading DEX, with rivals Kyber Network …

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 Texas State Securities Board has shut down the activities of a South African multi-level marketing scheme involving cryptocurrency investments in the state. In a recent statement, Securities Commissioner Travis J. Iles said that the company has duped investors into sending them Bitcoin (BTC), which would supposedly be transferred to unidentified forex brokers for automated trading using artificial intelligence. According to the statement, Mirror Trading International PTY LTD recruited unregistered salespersons to lure investors to invest money for a return of 10% per month. The salespersons were supposed to promote the scheme and onboard new investors and multilevel marketers to …

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 …

Scam tokens are a growing problem on the decentralized exchange and liquidity pool Uniswap — owing to the protocol’s open listing policy. In recent days warnings have been issued about scam tokens targeting four of the most buzz-worthy decentralized finance (DeFi) projects including Curve Finance, 1inchExchange, Tornado.Cash, and dYdX. With any token able to be listed on the platform’s drop-down menu simply by making a GitHub request, the platform’s users are increasingly calling for more stringent vetting to be introduced. Open listing policy leads to scam tokens Decentralized derivatives project Opium took to Twitter on July 7 to warn users …

Gumi Cryptos Capital partner, Miko Matsumura, recently spoke with a scam artist pretending to be Justin Sun. The imposter was attempting to sell a supposed privacy-focused crypto asset pegged to the value of real Tron TRX coins. Upon initial inspection of the project and its token sale, Matsumura jumped on Skype for a call with someone who claimed to be Justin Sun. "The impostor was very realistic as you can see," Matsumura told Cointelegraph referring to a video he provided of his chat. The video looked highly suspicious The video of the web chat showed a person resembling Justin Sun …

Willie Breedt, a South African national accused of stealing up to $16.3 million from around 2,000 investors via his VaultAge Solutions scheme, has reportedly been forced into bankruptcy by a local court. According to a recent report from News24, the sequestration order was initiated on July 3 by Simon Dix — one of VaultAge’s largest investors, who entrusted Breedt with 7.5 million South African rand, or $440,000. VaultAge Solutions was founded in 2018, promising weekly returns on customer deposits through crypto mining and trading and accepting deposits starting from $50. The scheme’s investors have allegedly received only 1% of expected …