With a population that leans both old and wealthy, Scottsdale has become well known as a place for fraudsters to both live and pillage, so much so that we’ve written numerous pieces about it, which you can read here. And with technology comes new and innovative ways to steal from people.
One of the newer and hottest ways to separate people from money has been the cryptocurrency industry. From making crypto coins with no inherent value, marketing and getting a bunch of investors only to “rug pull” the project with the early backers getting all the investment to more standard schemes that use the relative anonymity of cryptocurrency to get paid, it is almost a perfect, unregulated market to utilize for nefarious means.
With all of this in mind, it should come as absolutely no surprise that crypto scamming has made its way to Scottsdale, to the tune of $5 million stolen from Scottsdalians in crypto scams.
In response, Scottsdale Police launched the “Stop The Click, Stop The Loss” campaign, warning people not to click suspicious crypto-related links or use Bitcoin ATMs for payments or investments. Detective Jeff Brennan, who investigates these crimes, says romance scams often begin on dating sites and shift to apps like Telegram or WhatsApp. At the state level, Governor Katie Hobbs recently signed a new law requiring Bitcoin ATM operators to issue receipts with wallet addresses and enforce transaction limits.
That said, warnings and laws can only do so much. None of the stolen funds have been recovered due to crypto’s untraceable nature. The crypto industry is truly the wild west, with few laws, even less enforcement, and an ethos that is little more than caveat emptor for your everyday person.
So what can you do? The only thing you truly can do is to watch out for yourself and those you care about (and for us, that’s you). And here, it’s more of a matter of what NOT to do.
For starters, nearly all new cryptocoins are specifically designed to enrich the early sponsors, and you will not be one…buying into one nearly ensures you will lose money. Don’t buy into them. If you are invited into a Telegram or WhatsApp group from someone you don’t know in real life, it’s probably worth avoiding (note: WhatsApp is a commonly used messaging platform around the world, its use isn’t suspicious in and of itself, but if an invitation is from someone you don’t really know, buyer beware).
Forget the price of bitcoin…the cryptocurrency world is absolutely full of sharks right now. Don’t jump in the water.