Britons Lost £2 Million Pounds in Crypto Frauds in Two Months

BTC Wires: UK police revealed that Britons have lost around $2.55 million in less than two months owing to criminal activities associated with cryptocurrency.

UK police’s project, Action Fraud, stated that an average loss of 11000 British pounds was suffered in 203 cases reported during the months of June and July.

Action Fraud Project is an initiative taken up by National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which comes under City of London Police Department.

The common modus operandi to conduct fraud was to use social media channels to promote “get rich quick” Ponzi schemes. The fraudsters used to offer fake mining and trading offerings in order to steal money from people through such platforms.

Mining is the process of creating digital tokens like Ethereum and Bitcoin. With the increasing popularity of the mining, people have found innovative ways of conducting fraud and making money. Criminals offer fake investments in so-called highly valuable coins. This is different from cryptojacking which is another form of popular fraud, wherein criminals hack browsers of the people to use the computing power, to mine cryptocurrencies without their knowledge.

The Action Fraud project mentioned that the fraudsters would persuade its victims to register on their cryptocurrency websites and give in their personal information like credit card and bank account details in order to start a trading account. The victim was then asked to make an initial deposit, post which the fraudster would convince the user to continue making investments so that they can earn a greater amounts of profit.

In some of the cases, the victims realised that they are being looted in the name of exponential gains. However, by then the websites went offline leaving no trace of the fraud.

Pauline Smith, director of Action Fraud, said that people who invest or are thinking of investing in cryptocurrency, should research exhaustively about the company they are choosing to invest with.

“The statistics show that opportunistic fraudsters are taking advantage of this market, offering investments in cryptocurrencies and using every trick in the book to defraud unsuspecting victims,” he added.