coinfomania.com
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned financial institutions and crypto traders about the increasing growth of fake crypto investment apps.
Fraudulent Crypto Apps Defrauded 244 Victims
According to the public warning issued earlier this week, the FBI stated that fraudulent investment applications posing as real businesses had stolen $42 million from 244 investors between October 2021 to May 2022.
The report noted that cybercriminals replicate legitimate businesses using their names, logos, domains, and other similarly identifiable threads to convince investors to download fake apps. The FBI further explained that investors could not withdraw their funds after making deposits on the apps.
“The FBI has observed cybercriminals contacting U.S. investors, fraudulently claiming to offer legitimate cryptocurrency investment services, and convincing investors to download fraudulent mobile apps, which the cybercriminals have used with increasing success over time to defraud the investors of their cryptocurrency,” the agency said.
Cyber Criminals Operated Under YiBit Exchange
While warning investors and financial institutions to be wary of unsolicited requests and prompts that require them to install applications from unverified individuals, the agency gave instances of cases that were used to perpetrate such acts in the past.
In one case, the bad actors defrauded $5.5 million from at least four persons after pretending to be employees of a cryptocurrency exchange called YiBit, which closed operations back in 2018.
The cybercriminals under the company’s name convinced investors to download and install the crypto trading applications on their mobile phones and deposit funds into the app. After making deposits, 17 registered traders received an email informing them to pay taxes on their investments before withdrawing their assets from the platform, but four victims could not withdraw their funds.
In another case, a group of persons pretending to be from an undisclosed licensed U.S. financial institution defrauded 28 investors out of $3.7 million.
The bureau also said that another app dubbed Supayos, also known as Supay, requested two investors to deposit funds on the platform before freezing one of the user’s accounts, stating that the minimum balance requirement was $900,000.
Meanwhile, in April, the U.S. Secret Service revealed that the crypto industry lost over $14 billion to hackers and fraudsters in 2021.