On Monday, July 18, the FBI issued a warning for financial institutions and investors about fraudulent cryptocurrency investment apps. According to the warning, during the past year, at least 244 victims lost $42.7 million due to the malicious cryptocurrency apps.
According to the warning, the threat actors trick the potential victims into downloading a fraudulent app that used the same name and logo of an existing legitimate crypto company. The next step is to convince the users to make deposits of cryptocurrency into wallets that supposed to be associated with user’ new accounts. Eventually, these assets end up in scammers’ hands.
“The FBI has observed cyber criminals contacting US investors, fraudulently claiming to offer legitimate cryptocurrency investment services, and convincing investors to download fraudulent mobile apps, which the cyber criminals have used with increasing success over time to defraud the investors of their cryptocurrency,” said the FBI.
The FBI mentioned a case when fraudsters posed as YiBit1 cryptocurrency company stole approximately $5.5 million from four victims. They acted according to the fraudulent scheme described above. In particular, the scammers tricked victims into downloading the malicious YiBit app and depositing cryptocurrency into wallets associated with the victims’ YiBit accounts.