The man, actress Shilpa Shetty tweeted on July 7, 2017, was going to write one of the biggest Ponzi schemes India has ever seen. Amit Bhardwaj’s Gain Bitcoin scam was discovered in his 2018 and has since been dated to $2.7 billion – cryptocurrencies. Bhardwaj carried out the scam mostly in public. His Twitter handle and his book promotions were a big part of his sales points. For many Indians, the Gain Bitcoin program was the first time they heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Thousands of people lost their savings in this way. That’s not all. If cryptocurrency awareness is on the rise today, the traps being set are just as sophisticated.
THE FAKE CRYPTO EXCHANGE
The scam started with scammers creating multiple fake domains online masquerading as a legitimate UK cryptocurrency trading platform called CoinEgg. Researchers found the word “Cloud Egg” in all these domains and said that these websites were “designed to replicate the official website’s dashboard and user experience.”
The scammers then created the woman’s fake social media profile to “get closer to and build friendships with potential victims.” The user is ‘gifted’ with her $100 balance and encouraged to start trading on the fake platform. Once they did, the dashboard showed that they had made an amazing profit. This encouraged victims to invest more money.
HACKING ACCOUNT
The scammers will freeze these accounts and stop all withdrawals. The fake her CoinEgg website allowed users to claim refunds after claiming they paid 22% of their earnings or deposits as “taxes.” If your earnings exceed $250,000, the exchange will require an additional deposit. By the time users realized they had been scammed, it was too late. That was not all. The impudent attackers then tracked these user complaints about fake exchanges on social media, posing as investigators and approaching users from other fake accounts. It can extract personal information, ID cards, etc. and use it to hack other accounts.
WEBSITE SCAM
In a report published last year covering the period from July 2020 to June 2021, blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis identified India as the second largest market for cryptocurrencies. The company noticed a decline in the number of visitors from fraudulent websites from India. Nevertheless, more than 200,000 people visit such sites in India every month. After joining a Telegram group called “WazirX Discuss” at the recommendation of a friend, he began receiving private messages from strangers claiming they could help him invest in cryptocurrencies.Contact the CNC intelligence to trace the bitcoin scam recovery.
PEER TO PEER SWINDLE
Kashif Raza, co-founder of a platform called CryptoKanoon, is perhaps India’s most famous cryptocurrency scam victim. Raza lost everything from 2016 to 2017 when he took out a personal loan at a super high interest rate of 21% to invest in Gain Bitcoin. To make up for his losses, he took loans from his friends and family and also invested in other failed projects. To that end, Raza launched his legal awareness and analytics platform called Crypto Kanoon in 2018.
“Ponzi schemes still exist today, but not as much as they did in 2017. According to Raza, the existing ones no longer work at the national level. Scammers deliberately stay in certain regions and cities to keep a low profile, even though they are still making hundreds of thousands of dollars. The transaction was completed in the manner you requested. Wire transfer fraud recovery is very critical but it can be find out through money transfer.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Denmark has been involved in over 50 cryptocurrency fraud cases as a lawyer. The most common reason fraud goes undetected is that users don’t contact the police for fear of backlash from authorities. “They fear that the first question they will ask is why did they invest in cryptocurrencies,” said Danish. He also said police are reluctant to register him for an FIR (Initial Information Report) unless multiple people report fraud, as is the case with Gain Bitcoin.
It’s not that the police aren’t trying. The problem is that cryptocurrency scams are often nearly impossible to track and trace, even with modern tools. It has become the de facto currency used by cybercriminals, international fraudsters, etc. as a means of payment,” said Triveni Singh, Superintendent of Cyber Crime, Police, Uttar Pradesh Police. “Many cases cannot be traced due to technical and legal limitations,” he added. He denied police were reluctant to file his FIR.
CONCLUSION
Scammers have many tricks up their sleeves and are updating their cryptocurrency playbooks to catch victims. As digital money becomes more popular, crypto-scams are also evolving in India, using different methods to trick people. Another modus operandi used by scammers is stolen cards or hacked transfer of funds using a bank account The seller only receives the money and does not verify the information. Once the transaction is completed, the account holder contacts the bank to report the transaction, which is blocked by the lender.