On Monday, October 14, Hong Kong police announced the arrest of 27 people, including university graduates, recruited by a syndicate to create fake trading platforms and websites for fictitious crypto companies. Most of the syndicate’s members were between 21 and 34 years old.
According to law enforcement, in October last year, the cyber syndicate opened its operations center in an industrial area of Hong Kong and began recruiting graduates from technological universities.
Criminals found their victims through social networks and dating sites, where they used deepfake technology during video calls to replace their faces with the faces of attractive women. Once the criminals reached a level of trust with their victims, they offered them to “invest in high-yield cryptocurrencies.”
According to police, the scammers’ victims included men from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, India and Singapore. Their total damage amounted to more than 360 million Hong Kong dollars ($46 million). During the search, the police discovered a results board where the results of a competition between cyber syndicate participants who had defrauded the largest number of victims were noted.
“The results were listed on a board for everyone to see. The person who topped the list last month received a $266,000 bonus, a police spokesman said.
In September, a fake Tesla channel was discovered on YouTube distributing a video featuring Elon Musk, which promises users a free distribution of BTC, ETH, DOGE and USDT.
Source: Bits
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