The Guardian: Australian Bitcoin scam sites registered to Russian residents

Tens of thousands of Australians were harmed by fraudulent investment offers using images of local celebrities. The scheme’s operation centers on five addresses in central Moscow. The Guardian reports.

Similar fraud was first recorded in 2018, but during the pandemic it gained new momentum.

Under the guise of an advertising or news publication about cryptocurrency investments, users are invited to register on the site. After entering personal data, representatives of the ‘investment company’ call the prospective victim and persuade them to invest about $250. Over time the amount increases.

An example of a news article posted by the scammers. Data: The Guardian.

One of the victims of the scam said they transferred more than $80,000 to an exchange named Jubiter.

The Guardian journalists uncovered another cryptocurrency trading platform named Gtlot, registered on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Five minutes after registering on the site, a representative from the service in the Netherlands called them, promising a monthly income of $500 to $3,000 after an initial investment of $250. The caller also added that authorities planned to withdraw banknotes from circulation and advised rushing the investment.

The investigators found hundreds of domains through which the scammers distributed advertising for their scheme. All of them were registered to five people, whose addresses are in central Moscow. Two of them use Gmail. A Google spokesperson said the information would be passed to the company’s security team for investigation.

According to other information, the scammers may be linked to Ukraine. The sites do not allow Ukrainian phone numbers, and in a previous Guardian investigation in Kyiv a call centre advertising investment offers using images of celebrities was discovered.

Scammers from Kyiv extorted around $70 million from pensioners by posing as investments in Bitcoin

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission was able to trace the source of some of the advertisements – most of them are located abroad, despite the use of Australian addresses and phone numbers on the site.

The Guardian calls the scheme a “highly organized global business”, making it difficult for regulators to trace and block in Google’s search engine.

Earlier ForkLog reported on the company ‘Finiko’ from Tatarstan, which operated on the principle of a financial pyramid. From August 2019 to December 2020, under the guise of cryptocurrency investments, it attracted at least 80 million rubles. According to some reports, the real damage could exceed several tens of millions of dollars.

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