In recent news, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a warning for investors to be aware of a new type of crypto scam. The FBI has warned citizens about a new scam crypto job advertisement in circulation.
On Monday, in an attempt to warn the investors the FBI published a detailed announcement saying that U.S. citizens and individuals living or traveling abroad should be aware of false job advertisements linked to labor trafficking.
It added that victims have been “held against their will, intimidated, and forced to commit international cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes.” The agency also took to Twitter to caution the masses.
Further, the FBI says that victims have largely been targeted in Asia and are offered a wide range of opportunities, including technical support, call center customer service, and beauty salon technicians. However, upon arrival in a foreign country, job seekers are “coerced” into committing cryptocurrency investment schemes.
Notably, such rackets have become increasingly common these days. A few days back, the Philippine National Police rescued 1,090 people from several Asian nations who were trafficked into the country and were wrongfully involved in crypto scams.
As stated in the FBI’s report, the victims in such cases are first given hopes of livelihood and are also offered online jobs, free flights, and accommodation. However, upon their arrival in the country, their passports were confiscated. Furthermore, they were made to work up to 18 hours daily with salary deductions for taking breaks.
The FBI has asked victims of such schemes to come forward and report the activity through an online portal. In recent times, the FBI has been involved in numerous cases involving cryptocurrency scams and crypto-related incidents in recent years.
On May 1, the Detroit field office of the FBI and the National Police of Ukraine “conducted coordinated, court-authorized activity,” which concluded with the seizure and shutting down of nine digital currency exchange services. Additionally, the FBI collaborated with the Norwegian authorities to tackle Crypto crimes and also seized approximately $5.84 million in cryptocurrency, marking the largest crypto seizure in Norway’s history.
The increasing cases of crimes around cryptocurrencies have been a major source of concern to regulators. Additionally, in the name of crypto jobs, malicious actors are intending to carry out their motives. In a different but not similar case, North Koreans hackers were impersonating documents etc for landing jobs at crypto firms.
Using this, North Koreans can learn about future bitcoin trends by gathering information from cryptocurrency companies. Further, this could give the North Korean government an advantage in how to launder cryptocurrency in a way that helps Pyongyang avoid sanctions.