The police in Mumbai, India have successfully arrested a group of four people involved in a crypto scam that is worth about $17 million or 1 billion rupees according to the crypto news section in the local media The Times of India. Four individuals were arrested and have their bank accounts frozen but the police are still looking for a fifth suspect who played one of the most important roles in the scam. One resident of the Indian city of Surat, Umeshchand Jain filed a complaint after he claimed that the suspect defrauded him of $145,000 or 10.2 million rupees. The police inspector Sunil Jadhav explained further:

 “The accused held meetings in Mumbai, Surat, and other parts of Gujarat, and lured people into investing their hard-earned money by promising to double it in two months. Initially, the gang repaid a few investors to lure more people in and then defaulted. Their intention was to cheat.”

The report continues on to state that the group launched a fake cryptocurrency named ‘’Cashcoin’’ in 2018 and was later sold to multiple investors promising high returns and a quick doubling of their investment. All of the offenses were registered by the city crime branch at the local police station law enforcement claim breach of trust and criminal conspiracy. The lawyers of the defendants, on the other hand, claim for their clients to be innocent and to be wrongly arrested. In India in the past couple of weeks, multiple arrests were conducted after another group was found and accused of scamming investors for $71.6 million. The analytics company Chainalysis published a report where it says that the value of ETH stolen with scamming reached $36 million last year which is almost double than 2017.

The Israel-based crypto brokerage Coinmama which is very popular in the country is in the latest cryptocurrency news for suffering an apparent data breach that affected the data of 450,000 of its users. The brokerage, which allows users to purchase Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) using a credit card, suffered the breach as part of a mammoth, multi-platform hack that affected 24 companies and a total of 747 million records which included gaming, travel booking and streaming sites. According to the brokerage, around 450,000 email addresses and hashed passwords have been posted on a dark web registry. As an excerpt from their statement reads:

“As of February 15, 2019, there has been no evidence of this data being used by perpetrators. Given the dated nature of the published data, we have no reason to suspect that any other Coinmama systems are compromised. Coinmama does not store credit card information.”

Aside from notifying users immediately, Coinmama says that its response team is requiring all of the affected users to reset their passwords upon login and monitor any suspicious activity or unauthorized access. The platform says that it is currently working hard to enhance its safeguards and track any external signals. Even though the data breach impacted not only Coinmama big many other companies outside the crypto sector - it still represents the second high-profile system compromise in 2019.

The police in Turkey successfully arrested 24 people suspected of being involved in a $2.47 million hack from a crypto firm in Istanbul that was unregistered according to the crypto news coming from government-backed media outlet Daily Sabah. After a report of an alleged hack from the company in Istanbul that, the Cybercrime Department of the city police tracked the stolen money and found out there were moved out directly from the hacked accounts to other exchanges’ accounts. Most of the funds were stolen in Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH) reaching up to 13 million Turkish Lira. The police launched an entire operation to track the hackers and found out that the individuals were using their accounts on the popular multiplayer battle royal game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to communicate. According to the official police report, the raids were carried out in eight Turkish provinces such as Izmir, Ankara, Istanbul, Bursa, Edirne, Bolu, Antalya and Afyonkarahisar. The police managed to seize about $10.000 or 54,000 TRY in cash. 22 suspects were taken to the Istanbul Courthouse while the other two were released after they were questioned at the police station. Six of them were arrested by the court, and 16 released under parole. The same thing happened a few weeks ago but in the United States after the 20-year old American was caught and arrested for the theft of $5 million in crypto after he managed to scam 40 victims through SIM swapping and was charged for 10 years in prison. Crypto scams are on the rise again after they reached record high numbers in 2018.

Fake reviews are a huge problem for everyone, especially people who own some kind of business. In the online world, it’s extremely easy to create an account and leave mostly negative comments regardless of whether that person has ever tried a specific service or a product.

Over the past few days, emails have been piling up into our business accounts inbox, all in order to warn us about people leaving fake reviews for a broker or an exchange. As the email progressed, it went on asking for money- $5oo USD to be exact - in order to remove the comment.

Screenshot from the website  

Our Investigative Reports Show That 80% Of Us Trust Online Reviews, Making These Attacks Serious

Fortunately, our team at DC Forecasts has tons of experience with cases like these - so we immediately jumped in to investigate this issue and provide our readers with a full breakdown of what actually happens when fake reviews and fads like this one appear online.

The attacks such as this one can have a huge impact on the business itself because about 80 percent of the people trust the reviews and every one-star review can increase the chances of decreasing the revenue. Online reviews have also a strong impact on the users’ decisions and it’s important to try and protect the users from similar attacks like the one mentioned above.

 

The Story Behind ScammedBroker.com

One website named ScammedBroker.com has recently targeted multiple brokers and exchanges on various platforms. Some of the names included the popular commenting plugin Disqus, where ScammedBroker user seems to be writing fake reviews geared towards the platform within a minute span, claiming that all of the brokers on the site are a scam. The website which offers its users to check a certain broker or exchange before investing and going into crypto trading reportedly has “years of experience” and that it “will help its users to make informed decisions.’

The website of ScammedBroker.com claims to also “use regulatory data and has a team of specialists that review each broker or exchange” to provide accurate information for all of those who need the information the most. However, in reality, this is far from the truth.

 

Leaving Bad Reviews For Brokers And Blackmailing Them For $500 To Delete Them

The emails we got were warning of this new ‘’review’’ website since they leave bad reviews for all of the brokers and exchanges and later are contacting the certain platform and blackmail it for $500 in order to delete the bad review.

If you take a look at their website, you can clearly see that all of the extended reviews are negative but there are also ads that claim you can earn huge amounts of money by clicking on them. The site has no partners and it’s relatively new and there is no address or further contact details in order to get in touch with them.

 

Our Team Has The Proof: A Recording Can Prove This Scam

As one of the leading websites reviewing brokers and being in contact with new clients all of the time, DC Forecasts is proud to take in on this matter. In fact, we already have proof on the ScammedBroker.com case - coming in the form of recordings where users can see how this website blackmails brokers while asking for money.

Shocking, terrifying and unbelievable are some of the ways to describe this fad. However, at the end of the day, it’s important to always have your eyes open and look out for scammers and attackers online. Whether they want to hurt your business or blackmail you for payments, you need to find the tool that works best for you to defend yourself from such attacks.

The team at DC Forecasts hopes that this review helped you see the value of information - and prevent taking part in cases like these in the future!