![]() ![]() ![]() According to data from the US Federal Trade Commission, almost 40 per cent of the $1.1bn lost to fraud on social media in the 15 months to March 2022 was related to digital assets. “We regulate these companies’ anti-money laundering systems, but we don’t regulate the products.” “Cryptocurrency scams are some of the most reported at the moment,” he says. The use of cryptocurrencies by fraudsters to spirit away money is unsurprising, says Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the Financial Conduct Authority. “That buys them time to cover their tracks.” You message them on Telegram and they say everyone is trying to withdraw at the same time give us three business days,” he says. ![]() He lost an additional $5,000 to another investment scam on Telegram, which offered additional gains in return for inviting other people to join. In total he lost around $20,000 to the scammers, who went as far as to run a fake Instagram account of a real financial influencer and sent the victim a doctored photo of his driving licence. Once you send them the commission, they kick you out of the channel, block you and you have no more access to them,” he says. “That’s the last hurrah - the last bit of money they try and extract. The problems started when he went to withdraw the funds and was told he had to pay a 20 per cent commission - which, due to “regulatory laws” could not simply be taken from funds in the account. He was encouraged to invest in cryptocurrencies, which the group said was necessary for security purposes. The group claimed to offer products including a 90-day managed investment, as well as a “special ETF” which it claimed was offered to only the best customers. “Everyone has glowing reviews until you look a bit deeper, and these are the same people talking over and over again, using the same kind of speech patterns.” “You just see people every day posting encouragement to other customers and pictures of their supposed gains - it’s all staged,” he says. Eventually he was invited to a group on Telegram, the messaging app, which maintained the illusion of financial advice, although in retrospect he says the traffic was likely to have come from bots or “sockpuppets”, accounts appearing to be those of separate individuals, but which are controlled by one scammer.
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