US authorities are working to return $7 million to individuals impacted by a social engineering scam that deceived them into transferring money to fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms.
The scheme involved scammers reaching out to victims and building trust before directing them to websites that pretended to be legitimate crypto investment platforms. Once the victims made deposits, their money was funneled through over 75 bank accounts linked to shell companies, and then sent overseas, misleadingly labeled as domestic wire transfers despite actually being routed to a foreign bank.
According to officials, the fraudulent sites falsely assured victims that their investments were yielding significant returns. When victims attempted to withdraw their funds, the scammers pressured them to send even more money, claiming they owed taxes on their supposed earnings.
In 2023, the United States Secret Service recovered a portion of the stolen assets from a foreign bank and initiated civil forfeiture proceedings in a US District Court. However, the bank also laid claim to the funds, leading authorities to negotiate a settlement for $7 million of the seized assets.
Victims of this scam have been encouraged to reach out to the Secret Service to request assistance in recovering their funds.
In related news, a report from a blockchain analytics company highlighted that cryptocurrency crime is becoming increasingly sophisticated, dominated by organized cyber syndicates.
On the same day, Australian federal police alerted 130 individuals regarding a scam that targeted crypto users, using the same sender ID as recognized exchanges like Binance. Additionally, reports from social media users indicated similar scams impersonating Coinbase and Gemini, trying to trick individuals into creating wallets using recovery phrases controlled by the fraudsters.
Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes issued a warning about a new malware variant that was concealing itself in a compromised version of TradingView Premium. Moreover, Microsoft’s Incident Response Team reported the emergence of a new remote access trojan (RAT) aimed at cryptocurrency stored in 20 wallet extensions for Google Chrome.