The promise of digital assets to rapidly multiply investment has lured millions to bad faith platforms in recent years. We no longer count the scams, nor the number of victims, there are so many of them. Recently, researchers discovered a system that managed to take almost 500 million dollars, via cryptos, from French-speaking users. Decryption.
CryptoLabs, a well-organized and sophisticated system
The world of digital assets is used to scams. But there are very few that specifically target the French-speaking world. A few days ago, researchers from Group IB, a company specializing in the fight against cyber crimes revealed in a report, the existence of CryptoLabs. It is a huge crypto-based scam network.
Active since 2018, the system has so far caused damage of nearly $500 million, targeting only French speakers. The countries where it caused the most victims are France, Belgium and Luxembourg.
“CryptosLabs is a well-organized illicit business. It has a hierarchy of bosses, sales agents, developers and call center operators. Collectively, they could have earned up to €480m since launch. From an operational point of view, it is a well-organized and fully automated profitable IT company”, noted the Group IB report.
What about his modus operandi?
CryptoLabs creates fake websites purporting to belong to banks and mainstream crypto companies. Group IB reported that CryptoLabs controls no less than 300 bogus domains. These include crypto, fintech, banking and asset management organizations, among others. This, in order to convince its victims to buy fake stocks, NFTs and cryptos. The sites generally offer quite interesting returns on investment.
The report notes that with the well-developed software interfaces of its sites, CryptoLabs easily conveys a sense of legitimacy. The system invests so much in its online communication that search engines trick users into clicking on what they believe to be a legitimate business.
“(…) Visitors must first enter their details to access it. Then the scammer’s call center is notified and then contacts the victim. Fake salespeople, managers or investors then walk users through a verification process with a $300 entry fee and multiple documents to sign. Once their application is approved, users are presented with a lucrative-looking trading platform. If users want to make a withdrawal, they have to pay an additional fee”we read in the report.
Unfortunately, the system is still in operation and continues to claim victims.
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