Cryptocurrency Investors Lost $80M To Scams In 6 Months: FTC Report

Cryptocurrency investors lost about $80 million to scams in 6 months according to the recent report by the FTC-Federal Trade Commission agency as we can see more in our latest crypto news today.

The FTC is an agency that seeks to protect US customers against fraud and revealed that cryptocurrency investors lost $80 million to crypto investments scams between October 2020 and March 2021. According to a report published by the FTC, the agency noted that it has witnessed an increase in crypto scams since October with the data revealing that it received 7000 reports from consumers between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 with the investors losing $80 million within the timeframe. In the meantime, between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020, the agency got more than 750 reports related to crypto scams, totaled $7.5 million in losses. Comparing the two periods, the number of reported cases increased by 12 times while the reported losses skyrocketed 1000%.

FTC stated that the individuals between the ages of 20 to 49 were the ones that lost more money on crypto investment scams than other older age groups:

“In contrast, people 50 and older were far less likely to report losing money on cryptocurrency investment scams. But when this group did lose money on these scams, their reported individual losses were higher, with a median reported loss of $3,250.”

The US agency further detailed the types of scams that other actors used to lure their victims and one of them was the giveaway scams by impersonators online. According to the FTC, the investors sent more than $2 million worth of crypto to Elon Musk impersonators in six months. Scammers usually leverage the popularity of celebrities to get people to spend their money. The hackers managed to hack Twitter accounts that belonged to several personalities and even pooled people into sending BTC to be doubled.

The fraudsters managed to get about $120,000 in profits and as reported in February, scammers tried to trick the fans of popular K-Pop boy bands BTC into taking part in crypto giveaways. Other methods used by fraudsters include romance scams where one person thinks he’s in a long-distance relationship and was lured to send crypto to a scammer. The FTC noted that all of the ways to get people into crypto, scamming them was the most popular one. Members of the WallStreetBets Reddit forum were targets of a crypto scam with a new account called WallStreetBets Crypto Pumps that was of course not affiliated, told users to send ETH or BNB to receive a token called WSB finance. The tokens were never delivered.