Ranging from malware to scam style investment programs and fake donations to health organizations, these scam artists are well known for taking advantage of desperate times and desperate people. One of the most well known scams in the industry is Plus Token, they have been exposed again after rumours came flooding in regarding their operators being responsible for the Marsh market crash by selling their stolen Bitcoin.
PlusToken are known as the largest cryptocurrency exit scam in history so far. They are a 2019 ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of $2.9 billion in cryptocurrency assets by claiming to be a South Korean based crypto wallet project that can offer depositors interest in crypto. PlusToken explained that its high interest payments would be operated by exchange profits, mining and referral programs. This tempted over 3 million users to register with PlusToken.
In China, during June 2019, six individuals were arrested by Chinese authorities because of the suspects connections with the PlusToken ponzi scheme.
An increasing number of topical crypto schemes have started to show up as the pandemic has become worse, schemes ranging from fake donation campaigns for the W.H.O and the United States Centers for Disease Control and prevention to fraudsters impersonating officials from these agencies who can sell information on active infections for a fee paid with Bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency holders must be wary of these increasing number of crypto scams especially in this time. The U.S Federal Bureau of investigations recently issued a press release in which they warned of the increase of cryptocurrency fraud schemes during the current pandemic outbreak.
Most of the funds moved by the PlusToken scam were liquidated in two Asian exchanges, Huobi and OKEx. This has caused concerns over the exchange called Know Your Customer practices, which don't seem to have been helpful when it came to spotting or censoring the transactions from PlusToken.
Although efforts to reduce fraudulent transactions are being undertaken by exchanges such as Huobi and Paxful, users must always be aware of possible fraud attempts and carry out meaningful diligence into any project they are eager to trust with their coins.
