Over the past year and a half, more than 46,000 people have been scammed out of their hard-earned cryptocurrencies totaling more than $XNUMX billion, according to a report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The report states that the average reported loss for an individual was €2,600 in bitcoin, tether, or ether. For almost half of the victims, the report said the theft began with an ad, post or message on a social media platform.
Social media platforms are full of cryptocurrency scams that are most of the time “fake investment opportunities”. This type of fraud resulted in losses of €575 million. More than a third of all fraud on social media revolves around cryptocurrency, far more than any other payment method, the report claims.
Elon Musk and fake trades
Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram are the most popular fraud platforms, it was concluded.
Less than a month ago, researchers discovered a fake cryptocurrency exchange called BitVex that promised gullible investors a quick and easy way to double or triple their investments. The scammers used an edited video of Elon Musk to promote the scam and used various social media platforms, including YouTube, to promote the campaign.
Elon Musk often tweets and talks about bitcoin and dogecoin, and as such, his identity is almost constantly abused by cryptocurrency scammers (opens in a new tab).
In addition to fake investment opportunities, scammers often look to the NFT community for victims. Non-fungible tokens are a major trend right now, promising a huge financial return for investors who join a solid project sooner rather than later. The Bored Ape Yacht Club project, for example, generated millions of dollars for early investors, who are now frequent targets.
Scammers often use this fear of missing out to trick people into revealing their login credentials (opens in a new tab) or connecting their wallets to fake projects and downloading the content as soon as they do.
Via: Reuters (opens in a new tab)