Tagged: fraud

December 19, 2019 @ 3:29 am By Cali Haan  |  

Cryptoforensics firm Chainalysis says massive OTC cryptocurrency cash-outs by “PlusToken” scammers may be driving down the price of bitcoins. According to the firm: “Based in China, PlusToken presented itself as a cryptocurrency wallet that would reward users with high rates of return if they purchased… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 9:18 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Two young brothers from Surrey, British Columbia, have plead guilty to defrauding a 63-year-old Oregon woman out of bitcoins worth $140 000 USD at the time and ~$162 ooo at current prices. The Oregonian reports that Jagroop Singh Khatkar, 24, and Karanjit Singh Khatkhar, 23, plead guilty before… Read More

December 17, 2019 @ 4:47 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Macau businessperson Frederico dos Santos Rosário and his Hong Kong business partner, Dennis Lau, are being prosecuted in Macau for promoting OneCoin, a fraudulent $4 billion USD cryptocurrency scheme started by Bulgarians Ruja and Konstantin Ignatov and pervaded across the world. According to Journal Tribune… Read More

December 12, 2019 @ 1:17 am By Cali Haan  |  

Group-IB, a Moscow-founded cybersecurity firm now based in Singapore, “has detected a massive upload of debit and credit card records …on one of the most popular underground cardshops.” According to the firm, between October 28th and November 27th of this year, criminals uploaded more than 460,000… Read More

December 11, 2019 @ 6:31 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Four men have been arrested and charged with promoting a cryptocurrency mining pyramid scheme that defrauded victims out of $722 million USD. Matthew Brent Goettsche, Jobadiah Sinclair Weeks and Joseph Frank Abel were arrested in various locations in the United States early this month and were… Read More

December 10, 2019 @ 9:45 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Bogdan Nicolescu, 37, and Radu Miclaus, 37, two members of a Romanian gang that controlled a network of at least 40o ooo malware-infected computers, have been sentenced to 18 and 20 years in prison each. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office,… Read More

December 7, 2019 @ 7:44 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Authorities in Thailand have arrested 24 Chinese nationals perpetuating a scam involving cryptocurrencies and solicitation phone calls to citizens living in China. According to the Thai Immigration Bureau, the parties arrested were recruited by a gangster who, open the workers’ arrival, confiscated their passports. The… Read More

December 4, 2019 @ 8:38 am By Cali Haan  |  

Evidence unearthed by the BBC Russia suggests that the FSB, Russia’s military intelligence agency, is behind the disappearance of $450 million USD worth of cryptocurrency from the WEX cryptocurrency exchange. Much of that money belonged to exchange customers. Other parts of the story suggest the… Read More

November 27, 2019 @ 9:35 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Mark Scott, a lawyer accused of abetting the multibillion dollar OneCoin cryptocurrency scam, has been convicted of money laundering and bank fraud. Scott is now facing up to 50 years in prison. According to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman: “Mark S. Scott, an equity partner… Read More

November 24, 2019 @ 9:40 pm By JD Alois  |  

Renwick Haddow, a UK citizen who allegedly perpetrated multiple frauds, has received additional sanctions from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Haddow apparently also adopted the alias “Jonathan Black.” Haddow was previously disqualified as a director of any United Kingdom company for eight years, and… Read More

November 23, 2019 @ 1:53 am By Omar Faridi  |  

nsKnox, an established provider of cybersecurity protection for business payment technology, revealed on November 21 that it has teamed up with Big Four auditing firm KPMG. According to a release, KPMG’s Israel division will serve as the global distributor and service provider of, KPMG Secure… Read More

November 20, 2019 @ 8:38 am By JD Alois  |  

Elliptic, a provider of crypto-asset risk management solutions, has launched a monitoring system for XRP (Ripple) transactions. Simultaneously, Elliptic claims they have identified “$400 million of illicit activity” without naming perpetrators nor specifically what type of illegal transactions are taking place. Elliptic notes that this… Read More

November 14, 2019 @ 12:58 am By Cali Haan  |  

Executives who allegedly ran a fraudulent $342 million USD (400 billion won) cryptocurrency scam called Coin Up in Korea from August of last year until this past February have received significant prison sentences, Yonhap News reports. 53-year-old Coin Up executive Kang-mo, who allegedly displayed a… Read More

November 3, 2019 @ 5:54 pm By Cali Haan  |  

A Canadian living in the Burj Khalifa, Dubai’s most famous luxury building, has been arrested for serial fraud, including cryptocurrency fraud, and is now sitting in a cell at the Al Awir jail, Gulf News reports. Aziz ‘Com’ Mirza and his two brothers allegedly used online… Read More

November 3, 2019 @ 4:47 pm By JD Alois  |  

An ongoing enforcement action brought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) pertaining to a cryptocurrency called ATM Coin has been resolved with a federal court ordering defendants to pay over $4.25 million in penalties. The US District Court of Eastern District of New York… Read More

November 1, 2019 @ 1:14 am By Cali Haan  |  

The number of unlawful sites soliciting crypto investments from investors in Belgium has now reached 131 entities, an update to list of such sites indexed by the country’s Financial Services Markets Authority (FSMA) indicates. Even then, “This list cannot be considered as exhaustive,” the regulator… Read More

October 30, 2019 @ 3:45 pm By JD Alois  |  

Back in 2015 during the earliest days of securities crowdfunding in the US, the first case of alleged fraud surfaced by an issuer using Reg D 506c. Ascenergy, a purported Oil & Gas company, along with CEO Joey Gabaldon and several relief defendants were the… Read More

October 27, 2019 @ 4:10 pm By Cali Haan  |  

Police in Greece have arrested Ivan Manuel Molina Lee, president of payments processor Crypto Capital, for allegedly laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds for Columbian cartels. Molina is being held now by authorities in Poland, who believe he used the country as… Read More

October 27, 2019 @ 11:32 am By Cali Haan  |  

A former vice mayor of the Philippine city Cagayan de Oro has been arrested for his alleged involvement in an investment scam in Cebu, and is also known for being “visible” at events hosted by another scheme called Freedom Traders Club (FTC), which sold a… Read More

October 16, 2019 @ 8:24 pm By JD Alois  |  

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a civil enforcement action against David Gilbert Saffron and Circle Society Corporation, based in Nevada. The CFTC alleges fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and registration violations relating to an $11 million binary options scheme Saffron operated through Circle Society…. Read More