The intricate web of crypto scams: An advisory
economictimes.indiatimes.comcrypto landscape is evolving with a huge potential for financial inclusion across the world. Bitcoin might be king here, but that hasn’t deterred Nigerian princes from sprouting in large numbers. Imagine a scenario where someone promises you a 10x return on your Crypto investment, or offers you a native token or coin at what they claim is a nominal price but has the potential to become the next blue chip token, before they swindle funds from you and disappear.
Except you don’t have to imagine, because you or someone you know or someone you’ve read about in the news might have actually experienced this. You would be surprised that digital assets aren't more popular in the country given how widespread the scams involving them are.
Crypto scams one should be aware of
One can never be too cautious.
Let’s take a look at some of the popular scams that victims have fallen prey to.
One anecdote revolves around an impersonation scam where an individual was targeted by malicious actors pretending to be representatives of a popular Crypto exchange. They got in touch with the individual, promising him extraordinary gains on investment, which lured him into sending money through a UPI ID on a third party app. Once the transaction was done, he noticed that the app had disappeared from the Play Store.
The individual made a payment to the UPI ID while another user with the same UPI ID was concurrently engaged in a transaction (specifically a peer-to-peer transaction) on a different exchange. This elaborate ruse was discovered when the individual filed a complaint, and an investigation was initiated against it.
In another incident, a user was offered a make believe token with fake whitepapers to support its existence. The promise of
