The FTC warns of romance scams that involve cryptocurrency to lure people into bogus investments as we are reading furhter in our latest cryptocurrency news.
Scammers use romance as a hook to lure people into crypto investmetns and in 2021 the numbers increased by five times and more than 25 times than in 2019. The FTC warns of romance scams involving crypto investments as per the warning issued about crypto-related romance scams. The FTC agency of the US government has a mission to enforce civil US antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection:
“New data from the Federal Trade Commission show that more consumers than ever report falling prey to romance scammers. Consumers reported losing $547 million in 2021 alone.”
The growing trend in 2021 was scammers using romance as a hook to lure people into crypto investments. The agency detailed:
“Consumers who paid romance scammers with cryptocurrency reported losing $139 million in total in 2021, more than any other payment amount. 2021 numbers are nearly five times those reported in 2020, and more than 25 times those reported in 2019.”
The FTC also noted that the median loss for consumers that reported paying a romance scammer with crypto back in 2021 was $9770. The Federal Trade Commission explained that people are led to believe that the new online companion is a successful investor who casually offers investment advice. Besides crypto, another popular investment method promoted by these scammers involves foreign exchange trading. The most common method however for the romance scammers is not crypto:
“About 28% of people who reported losing money on a romance scam in 2021 said they paid with a gift card or reload card, followed by cryptocurrency (18%).”
The Federal agency issued a few warnings about the scams involving crypto and it even warned about these scams using social media and ATMs.
As recently reported, Google’s Threat Analyst Group said that the group of hackers is entering into YouTube channels and rebranding them to spread crypto scams, by mirroring the branding of other well-known crypto or tech companies. This is not the first time these bad actors tried to orchestrate a crypto scam on YouTube. Last year, the crypto exchange Gemini exposed two fake YouTube channels which were pretending to be from Gemini.
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