Cryptocurrency has become a playground for fraudsters

cointelegraph.com:

News involving crypto and fraud is ubiquitous in the white-collar crime sphere and, perhaps more worryingly, these fraudulent activities in the crypto sector are not limited to a single type of crime.

Diverse and distinct yet with one common thread, these crimes involve real money and crypto investors are the victims. Many people have placed their life savings into crypto and, on a larger scale, private equities, pension schemes and even nation-states are principal investors and losers.

There are con artists who will try and entice their targets to invest in a get-rich scheme that turns out to be a Ponzi. On Nov. 21, officials announced that two Estonian citizens were arrested in a $575 million cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering scheme. Additionally, in September, United States authorities announced that the “head trader” of global cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme EmpiresX had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in connection with the theft of $100 million from investors. The unraveling of major frauds such as EmpiresX has become frequent in the crypto market, as fraudsters cash in on the bountiful opportunities for digital assets scams.

Then we have the institutional risk — the exchanges and platforms that present as being mainstream and stable but then collapse due to holes in their balance sheets where customer deposits should be. The spectacular recent collapse of FTX has sent shockwaves through the sector, which was already reeling from the effect of the “crypto winter” that saw coin prices plunge across the board. According to a filing in a U.S. bankruptcy court, FTX owes its 50 biggest creditors almost $3.1 billion, though the true cost of FTX’s demise is far higher in terms of the ripple