The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) announced last month that it had issued desist and refrain orders to 11 entities for violating California securities laws. Some of the highlights included allegations that they offered unqualified securities as well as material misrepresentations and omissions to investors. These violations should remind us that while crypto is a unique and exciting industry for the public at large, it is still an area that is rife with the potential for bad players and fraud. To date, government crypto regulation has been minimal at best, with a distinct lack of action. Whether …

Crypto influencer FatManTerra claims to have gathered over $100,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) from crypto investors in an investment scheme that was later revealed as fake. The crypto researcher said he created the fake investment scheme as an experiment and to teach people a lesson about blindly following the investment advice of influencers. The account on Twitter has around 101,100 followers and is mostly known for being a former Terra proponent that now actively speaks out against the project and founder Do Kwon following its $40 billion collapse in May. In a Sept. 5 tweet, FatManTerra told his followers he …

Binance Australia is tightening up its onboarding process for new users as part of a push to protect users it's flagged as most vulnerable to financial crypto crime. The new measures were mentioned in Binance Australia’s June quarter Economic, Social, and Governance (ESG) report on Aug. 29, which noted that the exchange was working on a “stringent and user-focused onboarding experience” aimed at groups with a higher occurrence of financial crime. Speaking with Cointelegraph, Binance Aus CEO Leigh Travers and Zachary Lu from the exchange’s Financial Crime, Risk and Compliance unit, noted the company has been actively working on ways …

Two prominent YouTube content creators are set to lock horns in a legal battle over a cryptocurrency video allegedly promoting a project that ended up being a scam. Bitboy Crypto, a YouTube channel founded by Ben Armstrong, produces a variety of content focused on cryptocurrency news, projects and tokens and trading advice. The channel has been active since February 2018 and has over 1.4 million subscribers. The channel is known for its news pieces and trading-focused videos with headlines like ‘Top 3 Coins To Outperform Ethereum! (Strong Short Term Play)’ typifying the type of content disseminated to viewers. While these …

Cybersecurity analyst Serpent has revealed his picks for the most dastardly crypto and non-fungible token (NFT) scams currently active on Twitter. The analyst, who has 253,400 followers on Twitter, is the founder of artificial intelligence and community-powered crypto threat mitigation system, Sentinel. In a 19-part thread posted on Aug. 21, Serpent outlined how scammers target inexperienced crypto users through the use of copycat websites, URLs, accounts, hacked verified accounts, fake projects, fake airdrops, and plenty of malware. One of the more worrisome strategies comes amid a recent spate of crypto phishing scams and protocol hacks. Serpent explains that the “Crypto …

The British Army’s official Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts were breached on Sunday for almost four hours, with scammers promoting rip-off nonfungible token (NFT) collections and cryptocurrency scams. Just after 2:00 pm EST on Sunday, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MOD) Press Office tweeted it was aware the Army’s social media accounts were compromised and had begun an investigation. Nearly four hours later, close to 5:45 pm EST, the Office provided an update that the account breaches were resolved. The British Army's official Twitter account also apologized for the posts, saying it would conduct an investigation and “learn from …

The United States Federal Trade Commission has labeled social media and crypto a “combustible combination for fraud,” with nearly half of all crypto-related scams originating from social media platforms in 2021. Published on Friday, the report found that as much as $1 billion in crypto has been lost to scammers throughout the year, which was more than a five-fold increase from 2020, and nearly sixty times up from 2018. New analysis finds consumers reported losing more than $1 billion in #cryptocurrency to scams since 2021. Most of the losses consumers reported were to bogus cryptocurrency investment scams: https://t.co/MYGTcaw1aS #DataSpotlight /1 …

Lonely hearts in Silicon Valley are reportedly falling prey to a wave of “pig slaughtering” crypto scams via dating applications. An investigator for cybersecurity company Sift found that one in 20 people who approached her on dating apps in San Francisco was working the scam. Pig slaughtering, or butchering, is a type of scam in which an individual/group puts in weeks or months of work to build a fake relationship with the victim, metaphorically fattening them up. The end goal is to get the victim to invest in crypto via either a duplicated version of a legitimate website or by …

Australian consumer advocacy group CHOICE has called on the federal government to provide better protection for crypto investors while submitting a proposed regulatory framework for cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country. The regulatory framework was submitted in response to the federal Treasury’s consultation paper for crypto asset secondary service providers, or CASSPs, defined as firms providing custodial crypto wallets and exchange services. CHOICE commented: “As it stands, enforceable protections in the unregulated cryptocurrency market are somewhere between negligible and non-existent.” Outlining four main areas in its framework, the group called for a single definition of crypto for better regulation, a …

CEO and co-founder of crypto mining and investment platform Mining Capital Coin (MCC) Luiz Capuci has been indicted by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for “allegedly orchestrating a $62 million global investment fraud scheme.” The DOJ is charging Capuci with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit international money laundering in relation to several allegedly fraudulent schemes that were run via MCC. If found guilty, he faces a maximum prison sentence of 45 years. According to the DOJ’s indictment, Capuci, alongside unnamed co-conspirators, is accused of misleading investors over the profit-bearing …

There’s a poetic justice to scammers getting beat at their own game. A cryptocurrency scammer met their match when trying to trick Bitcoiner, Felix Crisan into sending them Tether (USDT). The scammer tried to impersonate John Carvalho, the CEO of Synonym, a Bitcoiner Cointelegraph regularly cites. The scammer, who we will call fake John from now on, wanted Crisan to send USDT, but Crisan–who’s been learning and getting involved with Bitcoin (BTC) for almost a decade–had other ideas: Today I've convinced a scammer to install a Lightning Network wallet. BTW @BitcoinErrorLog there's someone impersonating you on Telegram pic.twitter.com/Qd0I9pAney — felix …

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is taking Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) to the Federal Court, alleging that the firm and its Irish branch engaged in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” by publishing scam celebrity crypto ads. Some users have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sophisticated and long running scams tied to the ad. The spotlight on Meta has heated up in Australia since the start of February, with Cointelegraph previously reporting that the ACCC was investigating the firm over allegedly fraudulent crypto ads. Aussie mining billionaire Andrew Forrest also took legal action against the …