Cryptocurrency trading in India remains a popular avenue for traders in the country to invest. However, researchers found that this prevalence comes with a price, as many traders still fall victim to cryptocurrency scams.
Dubbed ‘CoinEgg,’ this new crypto scam has swindled over ₹1,000 crores from investors in the country, which involved threat actors using different payment gateway domains and Android apps to trick their targets into falling victim to a mass gambling scam.
CoinEgg is one of the many cryptocurrency scams in India that resulted in many Indian traders losing their digital assets.
Numerous fake domains are set up to replicate legitimate cryptocurrency trading platforms and their user experience. Then, the scammers would create a fake social media account under a female profile, which would be used to interact with the victim and start gaining their trust. Eventually, the fake user would entice the victim to invest in cryptocurrency trading, leading to the scam.
To lure the victim even more into trading on the fake crypto platform, the fake user would gift the victim some initial credits to spend. If the victim decides to invest it and seemingly earn from it, they will begin to spend higher amounts of their own money.
Upon depositing more money, the victim’s account would suddenly be frozen, prohibiting them from withdrawing their funds.
The attackers seemed not to end their malicious intent at this point since they would then proceed to create a fake reporting service where the victim would raise the issue. Several banking details would then be requested from the victim, which is allegedly important for the investigation, without the victim knowing that they are still giving away their assets to the scammers.
Other cryptocurrency scams that have recently been reported include scammers targeting LinkedIn users, a political conspiracy movement ‘Qanon’ urging people to invest in fraudulent crypto tradings, and crypto-based phishing domains being shut down after being identified by the police.
These rampant cryptocurrency scams are designed to trick and steal from victims through well-planned social engineering tactics. Thus, active traders are strongly reminded to be aware of the status of their online accounts, monitor their monetary transactions, and avoid engaging in suspicious interactions that could lead to being scammed.
