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Topic

Crypto Fraud

Investment scams and thefts carried out with digital assets, including worthless tokens, rug pulls and social-engineering schemes aimed at retail buyers.

Current stories

investConfirmed11 publishers

Brooklyn prosecutors seize 112 servers from a crypto scam network that took tens of millions

Brooklyn's District Attorney and the FBI seized 241 domains and 112 servers from a three-year crypto scam aimed at Russian speakers. The same operators then offered victims fake fund recovery, and about $300,000 has been recovered against tens of millions lost.

Perspective Coverage

11 publishers
Builder
Builder 6%
Operator
Operator 53%
Investor
Investor 41%

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence72
investConfirmed3 publishers

Scammers used GIWA's reserved chain ID to drain 766 ETH before its mainnet launched

Scammers ran a working copy of Dunamu's unlaunched GIWA network on its reserved chain ID 9134 and drained 766.25 ETH from users. The ID got through an exchange's listing checks, so a matching network ID is now weak evidence that a chain is the real one.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 38%
Operator
Operator 40%
Investor
Investor 22%

Reality

Evidence68
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+12
Incentives60
Confidence70
buildOne report1 publisher

Every control that failed in Orlen's $424m oil trade sat off-chain

Orlen's contractor converted $245m into USDT at Dubai companies and later handed 110m of it to a purported broker on two USB sticks. The Polish government's investigation pins the total lost and spent at $424m.

Publishers:tomshardware.com

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives45
Confidence40
investOne report1 publisher

Albuquerque clears every crypto kiosk from the city on a councilor's 90% fraud estimate

The September 10 ordinance gives operators 45 days from notice to pull every machine, and the 90% fraud rate the council relied on is one councilor's estimate that the published state and federal loss totals do not measure.

Reality

Evidence36
Adoption52
Hype gap+33
Incentives54
Confidence45
investOne report1 publisher

Trezor's spoofed alert reused the language of the $112.7m Coldcard exploit

The email telling Trezor owners their recovery phrases might lack entropy came from a real trezor.io address and passed DKIM, SPF and DMARC, and it described a defect close to the one that took 1,778.84 BTC from Coldcard users.

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption55
Hype gap+22
Incentives58
Confidence45
productOne report1 publisher

INDXcoin collected $3 million from 500 people through a referral chain of fellow believers

The Regalados had no crypto background and did not need one, because what moved the money was a warm recommendation from a minister who had already bought in himself, and that is a channel any product team would recognise.

Reality

Evidence66
Adoption72
Hype gap+12
Incentives58
Confidence61