AFRICA has become a common ground for swindlers to trap investors, making cryptocurrency an unsafe way to trade. The shocking fall in the value of Bitcoin this month has given cons another way to trick innocent investors.
European and American scammers target innocent African investors, into losing their hard-earned money. Cryptocurrency is one of the easiest ways to eradicate poverty. Hence it gained popularity in Africa in a very less time.
Scams have resulted in lost faith of many people in digital currency. Its unethical of cons to take away the savings of users.
Let’s have a look at the crypto-scams this year.
The Bitcoin Lottery Scam is a scam different from other scams that have happened. This scam happened in January 2019. Scammers created a fake lottery. Not only frauds, but hackers were also a part of it. This scam fortunately was a failed attempt because the hackers were discovered, preventing the most of the harm.
Velox 10 Global is another company which took away a lot of funds from its users. Based in Kenya, the company collapsed in March 2019, sinking almost all the investments made by their users. Kenyans have been skeptical regarding crypto-investing since then.
Boostpal, ViewDime, Time4Work, Workmines, WalletSync are owned by one criminal syndicate which one of their alleged member is a 43 year old Malaysian based Nigerian national who is living lavishly on popular social media platform Instagram with poor people’s money, people familiar said.
It all started with Boostpal which allegedly made off with millions of investors money in the same manner as Workmines Global.
Similar case of Workmines , Boostpal claimed to be a Paid- Video – Impression (PVI) platform that allows buyers of digital advertising inventory to manage multiple Ad exchange and data exchange account through one interface and on a Pay- Per – Impression Model.
Investors reportedly lost $55 million to Workmine video viewing scam.
The Bitcoin Wallet is another recent scam based in Ladysmith, South Africa. A company known as Bitcoin Wallet was reported to have swindled $130,000 daily from investors with some $2 million of investors fund reportedly vanished with the owner. It targeted the under-privileged group of population. following the collapse of the Bitcoin Wallet, the self-styled owner’s home in Ladysmith was looted and set alight allegedly by angry investors demanding payment.
Ways to avoid getting swindled in such scams are pretty simple. All the user has to do is pay attention to the red flags and not fall prey to outrageous schemes. Such schemes promise high returns which usually ends up terribly for the users.
Cryptocurrency has become an untrustworthy source of investments, investors have to be cautious.
