FBI detects fake crypto apps that scammed $42.7M from 244 victims

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The U.S. Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) detect­ed three fake cryp­to apps that stole around $42.7 mil­lion from 244 vic­tims between Octo­ber 4, 2021, and May 13, 2022, and recent­ly issued a pub­lic warn­ing against such fraud­u­lent applications.

Accord­ing to the FBI, these cyber­crim­i­nals are using the names and logos of legit­i­mate U.S. Busi­ness­es to attract invest­ments. The Bureau advis­es all users who sus­pect they have been sub­ject­ed to such fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties to con­tact the FBI through the inter­net or their local FBI field office.

Three fake apps discovered

The pub­lic warn­ing includes three fake cryp­to apps that the FBI has discovered.

The first one, Supayos (also known as Supay), took the name of a legit­i­mate Aus­tralian exchange and was active between the 1st and 26th of Novem­ber, 2021. The attack­ers behind the app con­vinced two vic­tims to down­load and make mul­ti­ple deposits into their Supay accounts. They told one of the vic­tims he was enrolled in a pro­gram requir­ing $900,000. When the vic­tim want­ed to close his account, he was told to deposit the amount need­ed or have all assets frozen.

YiB­it was the sec­ond fake app that con­fis­cat­ed approx­i­mate­ly $5.5 mil­lion from four vic­tims. YiB­it was a legit­i­mate exchange plat­form that shut down in 2018. The attack­ers were active between Octo­ber 4, 2021, and May 13, 2022. After they con­vinced 17 investors to deposit funds, they asked them to pay tax­es before with­draw­ing funds. Four indi­vid­u­als were unable to remove their bal­ances from the app.

The FBI didn’t dis­close the name of the third fake app. The attack­ers mim­ic­ked a legit­i­mate U.S. com­pa­ny and remained active between Decem­ber 22, 2021, and May 7, 2022. The FBI dis­cov­ered that they scammed 28 vic­tims for approx­i­mate­ly $3.7 mil­lion. Like the YiB­it attack­ers, all 28 vic­tims of this inci­dent were asked to pay tax­es before with­draw­ing funds. Even though 13 of them did, they were still unable to withdraw.

Cyberattack surge

A recent study by cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Hack­en found that the amount lost to cyber­at­tacks has grown expo­nen­tial­ly in the last two years.

$300 mil­lion was lost to cyber­at­tacks in the web3 space through­out 2020. This num­ber surged to $2.3 bil­lion in 2021. More­over, it seems like it will end up even high­er at the end of 2022. Accord­ing to the num­bers, the web3 space has lost $1.48 bil­lion to cyber­at­tacks between Jan­u­ary and May 2022.

What’s more upset­ting is that the recov­ery rates appeared extreme­ly low for the attacks of 2022. In ear­li­er years, the recov­ery rates were around 20%. How­ev­er, author­i­ties have only recov­ered 4.5% of the stolen $1.48 bil­lion in 2022. Accord­ing to the report, this indi­cat­ed an increase in the com­plex­i­ty of scams.

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