Cryptocurrency scams: a guide

PARIS, France — The number of investment scams is mushrooming as the cryptocurrency sector flourishes on both sides of the Atlantic.

The most well known of such currencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether.

In the United States cryptocurrencies accounted for 26 percent of fraud losses reported by consumers in connection with payments methods in 2024. This was just nine percent in 2020, according to the Federal Trade Commission data analysed by AFP.

Most of the victims are between 30 and 60, technology keen and are looking to invest, according to the FBI. The bureau puts at more than $400 million the losses avoided due to an operation it launched in January 2024.

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In Europe, the police agency Europol said crypto trading was the main area of investment scams.

The main targets in France were 18-34 year olds, according to a report for the French financial watchdog AMF.

The AMF pointed to a high concentration of crypto in trading scams since 2023, which it says usually involve social networks directing victims to fake trading platforms.

Here is a breakdown of the main cryptocurrency scams schemes.

‘Pig butchering’

Under this scam, fraudsters disguise themselves as female “influencers” or seductive female crypto traders. They mainly target men on social media networks, Margaux Frisque, a lawyer at d&a partners, told AFP.

Excited by the prospect of fast profits, the victims fall into the trap without checking out the reliability of the sites they are being directed to. They lose hundreds or even millions of euros, Frisque said.

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The term “pig butchering” comes from fraudsters referring to their victims as “pigs” that they gradually “fatten up” by luring them into a fake romance or friendship before “butchering” them. Fraudsters convince the victims to invest in fake cryptocurrency schemes.

The victims are often left with devastating financial losses as well as psychological harm.

Interpol, in a bid to avoid stigmatizing victims, has moved away from the term in favor of “romance baiting.”

‘Rug pull’

Rug pulls happen when developers lure investors to invest in apparently legitimate projects which are actually bogus, says lawyer Jasson Gottlieb of Cohen Morrison.

These scams mainly take place in decentralized finance, in the absence of middle men, according to Sonia Rogez, a lawyer at HSF Kramer.

Two of the biggest “rug pulls” took place in 2021. One was a scam in which the token Squidcoin was used to lure watchers of the Netflix series “Squid Game” before a mass sell off by its investors. This resulted in losses of between $2.5 million and $3.5 million.

The second took place when the creator of a virtual fighting game based on ape-themed NFTs (non-fungible tokens) disappeared with roughly $2.7 million investors had earmarked for the project.

More subtle versions of pull rugs involve the siphoning off of investment funds over a long period by hacking smart contracts. This refers to a computer code which should secure and automatize trading without the need for an in-between, Rogez said.

‘Pump-and-dump’

Often involving “meme coins,” which are generally purely speculative. Prices are artificially inflated until insiders dump them in a coordinated manner, leaving investors with heavy losses.

Unlike rug pulls, which can only be carried out by a project’s purported developers, pump-and-dump schemes can involve anyone.

This practice has long existed in traditional financial markets with so-called penny stocks. But there, it has been curtailed by regulators imposing strict rules on banks and traders.

In the world of cryptocurrencies, however, the human middle men are usually replaced by blockchain. It is a decentralized register outside traditional banking networks.

Frisque, the lawyer, urges investors in cryptocurrencies to be on “maximum alert” and “ultra informed, ultra prepared and ultra meticulous, because one is one’s own bank.”