Global Anti Scam Summit: online crypto scams are booming

There has been a five-fold increase in fraudulent crypto giveaway YouTube streams.

A panel at the Global Anti Scam Summit (GASS) has warned that deepfake and giveaway crypto scams are gaining popularity quickly, more than tripling for the first half of this year compared to last year’s period.

GASS was organized by Global Anti Scam Alliance, which aims to protect consumers worldwide from scams.

It was held at The Hague Security Delta in the Netherlands took place on November 9 and 10. Cybersecurity experts, researchers and other anti-scam organizations join together to assess the problem of scams at a global scale and work towards developing practical tools and solutions.

Online crypto scams were brought up as an intensifying problem, with deepfakes and crypto giveaways being cited as some of the most successful scams for the new period.

According to a September statement by Group-IB crypto giveaway scams that involve fake YouTube channels have grown five-fold in the first half of 2022. The average number of viewers for these crypto giveaway scam streams was said to be in the range of 10,000 to 20,000.

It was also noted that “63% of the new fraudulent domain names were registered with Russian registrars”, however, English and Spanish-speaking investors were the main targets. The fraudulent domains in question were more than 2,000.

The Singapore-based media outlet The Straits Times cited Law and Home Affairs minister K. Shanmugam saying that even though Singapore’s police has been receiving a steadily rising number of reports – 397 in 2020 versus 125 in 2019, it still comes down to international cooperation, as most of the scams weren’t based in Singapore.

Crystal Blockchain director Nick Smart was also cited by The Straits Times from his participation in GASS. According to him, the main allure of these scams is that they offer easy riches, so people in a tough financial situation are especially vulnerable.

While scams in Asia are indeed a rising problem, GASS looks at them on a global scale, enabling experts to form a more complete picture of what the trends are, and how counteract them.

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Written by Kyamil Nasuf

Reporter

Kyamil is a big tech fan, who loves hummus on everything and has enjoyed writing from a young age. He's had experience in writing anything from essays, through personal art, to news pieces and more serious tech analysis. In recent years he’s found fintech and gambling collide with all his interests, so he truly is a great fit to our team.

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