PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Cryptocurrency is a new type of digital money used entirely online, but the FBI estimates 24,000 Americans got caught up in scams involving it just last year alone. The cost? Nearly $1 billion dollars of regular peoples’ hard-earned money.
KDKA Investigator Meghan Schiller talked to FBI Pittsburgh about how its special agents are prepared to help as more people start to take a gamble with cryptocurrency.
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It’s popular and just about everywhere around southwestern Pennsylvania. In the South Side at Carson News and Lottery, you can snag a pop and some crypto.
“It’s like the Wild, Wild West of crypto,” said Zach Churchill of Carson News and Lottery. “Scan your wallet right here, click on whatever crypto you want and it will put it right on your wallet.”
But with easy access to money unregulated by any bank or government comes risk.
“Victims lose anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few million dollars and if you can imagine, these scams and schemes usually involve a large number of individuals so you may have a group of victims spread out across the country,” said Supervisory Special Agent Eric Yingling with FBI Pittsburgh.
He’s FBI Pittsburgh’s “crypto expert” and he says criminals seeking crypto don’t need to think outside the box.
“Oftentimes it’s really traditional scams and schemes we’ve seen for years just perpetrated with a sort of cryptocurrency…
