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Scammers impersonate police in Canada to extort bitcoins from victims.

Crypto exchange Livecoin announces to shut its services and requested its clients to proceed with fund withdrawals after gett
Crypto exchange Livecoin announces to shut its services and requested its clients to proceed with fund withdrawals after getting hacked.

According to local reports, crypto scammers in Canada are impersonating police and are extorting bitcoins from the victims across the country. Now the scammers are targetting the residents of British Columbia to extort bitcoins. The Royal Canada Mounted Police (RCMP) in Burnaby also revealed that they had been receiving increasing reports of scams involving bitcoin. Crypto scams have been on the rise in the last few years as crypto continues to get mainstream exposure.

Scammers call up victims and impersonate police local police.

The Royal Canada Mounted Police (RCMP) in Burnaby put out a tweet saying that there has been an increase in the number of scams involving the transfer of money via Bitcoin. The police further revealed that scammers call and advise the victim that they have an arrest warrant because their SIN card was used at multiple Service Canada locations. Scammers call up the victims several times with the same threat to arrest unless they pay money in bitcoins. The RCMP revealed that one resident of Burnaby, a city in British Columbia province, recently lost C$15,000 (US$11,000).

According to the local news outlet, Vicenews, a woman lost C$4,000 to the scammers. The woman received a call from the scammers, and they told her that they were from the Canada Revenue Agency and that they had a warrant of arrest over her SIN card’s irregular activity. The woman went on to describe the scammers as manipulative, aggressive, and convincing.

Crypto scams surge amid the pandemic.

There have been several reports of cryptocurrency-related scams amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had earlier issued a warning that crypto scammers are looking to unleash a surge in crypto-related scams. Since the inception of bitcoin almost a decade ago, the leading cryptocurrency has come a long way. The crimes related to crypto have also increased a lot since the cryptocurrency has started to gain mainstream exposure. Critics of crypto have used this as an argument to suggest that crypto might never replace the existing financial system.

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