Cleverness like a Hollywood movie ── What is the “rip deal fraud” spreading in Europe | coindesk JAPAN | Coindesk Japan

The immature and poorly regulated cryptocurrency industry is rife with exploits, hacking, price manipulation and other crimes. Some can cost hundreds of millions of dollars in seconds, and the identities of the perpetrators are usually hidden by fake online identities.

face-to-face cryptocurrency fraud

So, a group of clever scammers spent weeks or months contacting executives of blockchain projects, developing dreamy and elaborate investment stories, even meeting face-to-face at restaurants, The story of how he ends up taking millions of dollars in cryptocurrency and disappearing after that is pretty bizarre and looks like a Hollywood movie scenario.

However, according to interviews with victims and authorities, such scams have taken place multiple times in cities across Europe, including Rome, Barcelona, ​​Amsterdam and Brussels.

It’s a time-consuming cryptocurrency scam.

The case is being investigated by Austrian and Italian authorities, according to the victim and a German police officer who interacted with the victim.

Police refer to these cryptocurrency scams as “rip deals.” The attractive offer promises the victim a large profit, but ultimately they lose their fortune.

Fraud

Victims describe interactions with scammers that are strikingly similar. Scammers pose as investment agents and meet victims in restaurants and hotel lobbies to demand proof of their assets. The victim sets up a seemingly legitimate (but chosen by the crooks) cryptocurrency wallet and sends funds to the wallet. Once the funds are transferred, the scammers somehow withdraw the assets from the wallet.

Scammers are believed to obtain victims’ private keys or exploit security flaws in wallets.

The most famous victim so far is Ahad Shams, co-founder of the Web3 game engine Webaverse. He revealed on Twitter in February that he had lost $4 million after meeting a scammer posing as an investor in a hotel lobby in Rome.

Coin Publishers CEO Chris Hunter was also recently victimized. He announced a similar incident in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

Authorities are investigating whether the incidents are related, according to several people who have been victims of similar scams.

rip deal scam

A German police officer interviewed by CoinDesk said he had not heard of any investigation into the scam in Germany, but that Mr. Shams’ case was told to him by an Austrian special agent tracking the Rip Deal scam ring. Told.

In November 2022, Austrian authorities convicted an Austrian man arrested in Rome and deported to Vienna for defrauding four people and stealing cryptocurrencies. The details of this case are also similar to those of Mr. Shams and Mr. Hunter.

Members of these fraud groups are difficult to catch because they operate across multiple countries, making it difficult to track their movements.

A European-wide “something like a database on fraudsters is missing at national and European level,” said a German police officer.

Another person said German authorities contacted him about an investigation in 2021 after another rip deal scam victim was hit in Amsterdam.

Another victim said Italian authorities were also investigating a similar incident in Rome.

Victim in distrust

It is not clear how the scammers stole the assets from the victims’ wallets. Some suspected there were hidden cameras in the restaurant, while others even suspected he was hypnotized.

According to technology news site The Register, some victims have formed groups on the chat app Telegram to share information about scammers and see if they have anything in common.

Since The Register’s article was published, scammers pretending to be victims have entered victims’ Telegram groups to gather information about what they know and which country’s authorities they reported to. Some people doubt that

There is a great deal of mistrust among victims who have already lost much of their trust in businesses, the police, the cryptocurrency industry and, in turn, people.

Other victims and would-be victims who spoke to CoinDesk said they had experiences similar to those Shams and Hunter have publicly disclosed. According to those people, when they went to a restaurant chosen by a scammer in Rome, the scammer asked to sit at a specific table.

A common thread in most of the victims’ stories is that the scammers said they were working with someone named “Joseph Safra.”

A German police officer said he was interviewed to warn people against similar scams.

While online criminals were terrifying enough, cryptocurrency fraud appears to be spreading to the real world as well.

｜Translation and editing: Akiko Yamaguchi, Takayuki Masuda
｜Image: DALL-E/CoinDesk
｜Original: Crypto Con Artists Leave Trail of ‘Rip Deal’ Victims From Amsterdam to Rome