An Ontario man says he is "devastated" after investing his entire life savings in an investment scam he became involved in through a YouTube video he saw."I'm devastated. It ruined me, and my savings are gone," said Stephen Carr of Meaford, Ontario. Online investment fraud continues to be a significant problem in Canada, and Carr is one of many victims.
Malware hiding behind a sponsored ad link on Google siphoned thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies and NFTs from an influencer's wallet. The NFT influencer with the Twitter handle "NFT God" claims to have lost a "life-changing amount" of his net worth in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies after accidentally downloading malware he found via a search result from a Google ad.
Over the past year, cryptocurrency fraud has increased by 32% in the U.K. This is part of a larger "fraud epidemic" that began during the pandemic as people moved their financial activities online, according to a Financial Times report. Crypto-related losses totaled £226 million (or $272 million) from October 2021 to September this year, up 32% from October 2020 to September 2021.
The European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) filed a criminal complaint against Payvision and its former management, Rudolf Booker, Gijs op de Weegh, Cheng Liem Li. According to EFRI, the Amsterdam-based Fintech and licensed payment processor Payvision has been knowingly and willingly facilitating cybercrime and scams. Thus, Payvision would be liable for the victims' losses and has to refund them, EFRI principal Elfriede Sixt explains.
Unit21 and other U.S. consumer fintech community members have joined forces to launch the Fintech Fraud Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). Participating fintechs include Brex, Chime, PrimeTrust, Yotta and Airbase. This decentralized network uses a collaborative approach to data sharing to detect and combat fraud. The DAO is expected to process data from 20% of all U.S. fintech customers to help the industry transition from fraud detection to fraud prevention.
According to a report by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), criminal investigations have been launched against Payvision, the Dutch media outlet FD reports. The Amsterdam-based ING subsidiary allegedly deliberately neglected money laundering controls for years. The Dutch regulator DNB reportedly warned ING about the deficiencies several times but saw little improvement. According to a FinTelegram report, Payvision, Rudolf Booker, and Cheng Lim Li are the suspects in this criminal case.
An interesting report of Money Mobility Tracker®, a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration, presents a survey that shows that customers of financial institutions (FI) expect both maximum money mobility and fraud protection. The faster money moves, the greater the risk of fraud but consumers typically resist fraud prevention measures, mainly when those safeguards seems to be inconvenient.
Cybercriminals and scammers embraced crypto ever since its inception. The US FTC reported that since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams – that’s about one out of every four dollars reported lost, more than any other payment method. The median individual reported loss is $2,600. Nearly half the people who reported losing crypto to a scam since 2021 said it started with an ad, post, or message on a social media platform.
