Recently, there was news about the ICHCoin crypto scam, which has scammed around $30 million from users across the US. The scammers primarily use Facebook and Instagram to find potential victims, pretending to be crypto experts offering advice to lure them in. Eventually, they move to WhatsApp to finalize their pitch and convince the victims to invest.
This scam started back in December 2023 and has targeted around 600 individuals, with many losing large amounts of money -some even their entire savings. If we do a bit of math, that $30 million divided by 600 victims averages out to $50,000 each, showing just how effective and targeted their approach is. Scammers like this will likely continue to operate, but hopefully, we can see a decrease in these scams by educating ourselves and staying aware. Newbies should be especially cautious of these tactics.
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https://cryptonews.com/news/fbi-investigates-ichcoin-crypto-scam-costing-victims-millions/I remember hearing a lot about such scams after Bitcoin hit the 21K mark for the first time in 2017. Scammers were using the same technique as the one mentioned by you to lure newbies. They used Bitcoin as a mode of investment option but they never invested any money into Bitcoin. The only difference in this situation is that they are not using Bitcoin but their invented coin and are using WhatsApp to finalize the deal. I do not think the authorities will have issues in locating them as Meta the owner of WhatsApp is very helpful as they are the one who will have all the data that the authorities will need to trace the scammers.