A U.S. federal district judge has ruled that an allegedly fraudulent crypto token meets the definition of a commodity, bringing the case under regulators’ purview, Finance Feeds reports September 27. Judge Rya W. Zobel of the Massachusetts District Court ruled Sept. 25 against a motion to dismiss a case that had been launched by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against an allegedly fraudulent crypto scheme known as “My Big Coin Pay Inc.,” reported to have been based in the state of Nevada. The CFTC had sued tech entrepreneur Randall Crater, and other relief defendants tied to his firm, for …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking sanctions against the individuals behind the allegedly fraudulent Initial Coin Offering (ICO) known as PlexCoin, Finance Feeds reports September 26. The SEC has been involved in ongoing court proceedings against the owners of the associated firm PlexCorps — Dominic Lacroix and Sabrina Paradis-Royer — at the New York Eastern District Court since December 2017. The SEC’s initial complaint had charged the pair with violating securities law in respect to PlexCorps’ PlexCoin ICO in August 2017. The complaint had accused Lacroix — whom it called “a recidivist securities law violator in Canada” …

French stock market regulator, the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), announced it is blacklisting 21 new investment websites, including multiple crypto-related sites, September 26. The AMF characterizes the new additions as “unauthorized websites” that offer “atypical investments,” and directs users to its existing blacklist, which it notes is “not comprehensive.” In March, the AMF had added 15 websites — including those related to crypto and crypto-assets — to its blacklist, reminding consumers that “no advertising materials should make you overlook the fact that high returns always involve high risk.” Cointelegraph has this month reported on a similar move from Belgian …

An American musical prelude Bitconnect, the now-defunct crypto lending and exchange platform that has been ousted as a ruinous Ponzi scheme, has memorably been compared by the Silver Miller law firm to the fleeting 2011 Broadway musical “Wonderland,” based on the dizzying impossibilities of Alice’s adventures in Lewis Carroll’s celebrated novel. Silver Miller’s first class action complaint was filed on behalf of six defrauded Bitconnect investors in late January, just weeks after the Texas Securities Commissioner issued an emergency cease-and-desist order against Bitconnect for the selling of unlicensed securities. The complaint unconventionally opened with the following lyrics: “Welcome to Wonderland …

Japan’s National Police Agency has revealed that a staggering 60.503 billion yen ($540 million) worth of crypto was stolen in the first six months of 2018, Asahi Shimbun reports September 20. The agency is said to have stated that the number of reported incidents involving crypto thefts has hit 158 over the course of the first half of this year, triple the number of incidents reported for the same time period in 2017. For the entirety of 2017, around 662.4 million yen ($5.91 million) worth of crypto was reportedly stolen online, in 149 incidents – a figure dwarfed by almost …

Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has added 28 new sites to its crypto-related fraud blacklist, as it reiterates its warnings to consumers in a fresh alert posted today, September 4. The FSMA has said that despite its prior risk alerts, the agency continues to receive complaints from consumers swindled by fraudsters capitalizing on the cryptocurrency “hype.” The warning says that scammers are canny enough to lure victims in with easy-seeming profits, but that at this point, “the only thing they actually do […] is take the customers’ money and disappear. It is as simple as that.” The agency …

Indian police have arrested a man who was allegedly involved in promoting the Bitconnect investment scam, Financial Express reported August 18. The suspect, Divyesh Darji, is said to have been the India head of Bitconnect, the high-yield investment program that ceased its operations in January 2018 after coming under scrutiny for appearing to be a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Darji, a resident of Surat city, had reportedly already been issued with a look-out circular and was arrested August 18 in Delhi airport, after a tip-off from local immigration services. Financial Express cites Inspector P G Narwade of Criminal Investigation Department (CID-Crime) …

UK regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a second warning in a week Wednesday, August 8, over crypto-related “fraudsters” claiming to be an FCA authorized firm. According to the FCA, the rogue firm, Good Crypto, was giving out “false details or mix[ing] these with some correct details of the registered firm,” which in this case was London-based Arup Corporate Finance. “This FCA authorised firm that fraudsters are claiming to work for has no association with the ‘clone firm,’” the regulator continues. Good Crypto has its own website and other contact details, which the FCA warns “may be false” …

South Korean police have raided the office of a local firm whose alleged crypto scam promised investors the spoils of a sunken Russian warship, The Korea Herald reported August 7. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency reportedly sent 27 investigators from its white collar unit to to collect evidence from the premises of Shinil Group in Yeouido, western Seoul, and seven other locations on Tuesday. In mid-July, Shinil had released submarine footage of what it claimed was the wreckage of the Dmitrii Donskoi, an armored Russian cruiser that sank in 1905 in the midst of the Russo-Japanese war, alleging it had …

New research published today, Aug. 6, has shed light on the infamous phenomenon of cryptocurrency-related Twitter accounts advertising fake “giveaways,” revealing a network of at least 15,000 scam bots. The analysis of Twitter bots, which continue to aggravate and even fool unsuspecting users, came from cybersecurity company Duo Security. The project involved a huge tranche of 88 million Twitter accounts, with researchers using machine learning techniques to train a bot classifier. Using just the latest 200 tweets from each account, the classifier unearthed a mesh of 15,000 bots at work spreading fake competitions and impersonating some of the cryptocurrency industry’s …

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelegraph.com. Cloud mining — a service that enables individual users to lease hashing power from dedicated cryptocurrency mining operations — came forth as professionalization and cartelization of the mining business began to drive out smaller and insufficiently equipped players from the scene. Since there is no way to verify that the share of the mining rig you are supposedly leasing actually exists — even if returns on your investment seem to be flowing regularly at first — the scheme is widely regarded as a …

Kaspersky Lab’s security experts have found that cyber criminals were able to steal more than 21,000 in Ethereum (ETH) (worth around $10 million) through social engineering schemes over the past year, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reports Thursday, July 12. According to a July 9 report, cyber criminals have triggered more than a hundred thousand alarms altogether on security software in connection with cryptocurrencies since the beginning of 2018. Kaspersky Lab notes that scammers particularly single out investors interested in Initial Coin Offerings (ICO), using fake websites and phishing emails containing an e-wallet number to trick their targets out of money. The …