Investor persuaded to buy fake Airbnb shares for $ 1 million

By Thomas Brewster

Some scams are extremely complicated, requiring months of research to bypass business security mechanisms and find the right bank account to bleed. Other times, all you need is a persuasive phone call, a tempting offer and a little perseverance.

A court document unsealed over the weekend revealed that in October 2017, a fraudster presented himself as an employee of an international asset management company and offered an investor the “opportunity” to buy a pre-emptive right to Airbnb shares, three years before the company rental listed on the stock exchange.

The anonymous victim was persuaded and initially sent over $ 40,000 in exchange for the shares. In December, it sent another $ 40,000. And in the months that followed, until February 2019, it carried another $ 990,000.

That February, shortly after sending the bulk of the nearly $ 180,000, the victim visited the offices of the asset management company with which he thought he was doing business. It was then that he was faced with an unpleasant surprise: it was all a scam and no one had bought shares in Airbnb, even before its Initial Public Offering (IPO).

In December 2020, Airbnb was listed on the stock exchange, with its share reaching an intra-conference high of $ 165 and its market capitalization reaching $ 103 billion. It has now reached a market capitalization of $ 126 billion and shares are trading at dollars, something that would make any investor who had bet on the company before its IPO happy. But the victim does not own a single share.

He tried to call the number of the alleged asset manager. The telephone line was disconnected. In January of this year, he turned to Swiss researchers to help him, stating that he was an investor based in Switzerland. No further information was provided on the identity of the victim.

Swiss police have asked the US Department of Justice to help them investigate some of the money transferred to US banks. It is not clear if there was any success in recovering some of the stolen funds. The identity of the fake asset manager also remains unknown.

Usual practice

It was not the only time an investor was tricked into betting on pre-IPO Airbnb shares. In 2019, Forbes reported a case where many investors were deceived into paying $ 2.1 million for fake shares not only on Airbnb, but also on Lyft, Palantir and Uber. The scammers managed to extract all this cash in just four months between October 2018 and January 2019.

That case looks like a small fraud compared to the latter case, which shows how persistent fraudsters can become.

Investors should be aware that, usually, only employees and venture capital investors own shares in a company before its IPO, although the startup boom has led to the purchase of shares directly by current and former employees of state-of-the-art companies.

Two hackers who used ransomware REvil to digitally “infect” and then try to blackmail up to 5,000 victims have been arrested in Romania, according to Europol.

The European Police Department said Monday that the couple, who acquired ransomware from ReEvil, had paid up to $ 500,000 in ransom payments.

REvil sold ransomware to other hackers, but its websites suddenly went down in July after the Biden government threatened to crack down on the Russian-linked group. Its malware was effective in locking up victims’ files and paying ransom would help related parties to receive bitcoin payments.

Some REvil customers suffered serious damage, in one case, targeting customers of IT vendor Kaseya, with 1,500 companies breached and ransomed for a total of $ 70 million.

Europol confirmed that three more network associates had been arrested across Europe and South Korea earlier in the year and that an international law enforcement operation had recently tracked down, intercepted and confiscated some of the infrastructure used by REvil. The agency also reported that Kuwaiti authorities had arrested a GandGrab team believed to be the forerunner of REvil.

“A total of seven suspects linked to the two ransomware families have been arrested since February 2021,” Europol said. “They are suspected of attacking about 7,000 victims.”

Meanwhile, REvil decryption tools have been made available to “infected” companies through the No More Ransom service. Europol claims the keys have helped more than 1,400 companies decrypt their networks, saving them nearly $ 550 million in potential losses.

More work may be needed to eradicate criminal gangs from cyberspace. The main operators of REvil have not been reported arrested.

However, as further good news for the global ransomware effort, the BlackMatter cyber-extortionist group has announced that it is shutting down citing “some unresolved issues related to pressure from the authorities”.

According to reports, they had previously claimed to be chasing high-profile companies with revenues of $ 100 million or more.