Australia’s securities regulator has issued a warning about the increase in the number of fake crypto advertisements in the country. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said the scams have been falsely using celebrities, government agencies, and other prominent brands without their knowledge or consent. The regulator further said that these fake ads then direct the victims to fraudulent websites posing as digital currency trading bots or to pump-and-dump schemes.
These crypto scams target social media users with fake articles.
The ASIC further revealed that some of the celebrities whose images have been used include the former Premier for New South Wales Mike Baird and media personalities Waleed Aly, Virginia Trioli, Michael Rowland, and David Koch. According to the securities regulators, the most common scams have been through fake crypto trading sites that claim to use bots to achieve profitability. These include Bitcoin Trader, Bitcoin Revolution, and Bitcoin Evolution. The scammers target social media users with fake articles that tout their expertise in cryptocurrency trading. They usually contain links to mirror sites that resemble legitimate news sites.
Crypto scams continue to rise amid the ongoing global pandemic.
Cryptocurrency scammers have unleashed a surge in scams amid the ongoing global pandemic, according to several reports. While it continues to fight the scammers, Australia’s securities regulators revealed that it has found it very difficult to take down some as they are based overseas. This also makes it impossible to track and recover any money invested.
There are several types of digital currency scams that have become quite frequent including, fake giveaways, sextortion, fake exchanges, fake ICO’s, bitcoin recovery, video scams, Ponzi schemes, and the list goes on. Earlier, accounts of several famous people on Twitter were hacked to solicit bitcoins from their followers.
