“The digital gold rush is here. As more people attempt to make money from cryptocurrencies, criminals and con artists aren’t far behind. Make sure you know how to recognise the biggest schemes that want to part you from your digital coins,” says Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET South Africa.
The world seems to have gone ‘crypto-mad’. Digital currencies like bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, and even Dogecoin, are all over the internet. Their soaring value promises big wins for investors (if you’re “buying the dip”, that is). And the ‘fortunes’ to be made by mining for virtual money have echoes of gold rushes that formed the first mining towns in South Africa back in the 1800s. Or at least, that’s what many, including a long list of scammers, will have you believe.
In reality, if you’re interested in cryptocurrency today, you’re quite possibly at a major risk for fraud. In many respects, in this new unregulated world, bad actors often have the upper hand. In 2021, South African-based Africrypt was reportedly hacked, effectively wiping out a staggering R51bn of investors’ money. While the apparent hack made global headlines, the founders of Africrypt vanished as international investigators scrambled to piece together what happened in what is now suspected to be a completely fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform.
The good news is that normal rules of fraud prevention apply too. Everything you read online should be carefully scrutinized and fact-checked….
