fraud

According to CBS Atlanta, a 35-year-old woman from Stone Mountain, Georgia, named Mercedes Henry, a former universal bank employee at Ameris Bank, has been accused of unauthorized linking of six customers' bank accounts to the cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase between September and November 2021, and in collusion with others, transferring approximately $931,000 into a Coinbase account under her control.A federal grand jury has charged her with multiple counts of bank fraud, access device fraud, and bribery. Henry was arrested on September 25 and appeared in court, and the case is still under investigation by the FBI.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed two lawsuits in New York, accusing Cryptoaiml and TSAI of fraud under the guise of AI trading, involving approximately $15 million.The two lawsuits claim that investors were shown fabricated profit data and were asked to add more funds when attempting to withdraw.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission announced that the licensed virtual asset trading platform DFX Labs Company Limited reported "dfx[.]cn", "dfxcn[.]com", and other four websites as fraudulent websites. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has listed the relevant websites as suspicious virtual asset trading platforms.

Canadian "Crypto King" Aiden Pleterski will appear in court on his own due to not being granted an extension. He faces charges of fraud and money laundering for allegedly defrauding investors of approximately 40 million dollars and squandering the funds.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission announced that the licensed virtual asset trading platform DFX Labs Company Limited reported "dfx.cn", "dfxcn.com", and two other websites as fraudulent sites. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has listed the relevant websites as suspicious virtual asset trading platforms.

The criminal trial of Aiden Pleterski, who calls himself the "King of Crypto," regarding allegations of cryptocurrency fraud will begin on October 5 in the Ontario Superior Court of Canada. He is accused of raising funds from investors between 2021 and 2022 by making false promises of "smart investments yielding high weekly profits," with the fraud amounting to approximately $30 million. Canadian authorities have filed charges of fraud and money laundering against him in May 2024.According to CBC News, Pleterski failed to obtain a postponement to hire a lawyer and is expected to represent himself in court. The trial is expected to last about four weeks, and if convicted on the fraud charge alone, he could face up to 14 years in prison.In December 2022, several men (some of whom are reportedly victims of the scam) allegedly kidnapped and tortured Pleterski for three days, threatening his and his family's safety, and forcing him to record a video detailing his role in the alleged fraud. Pleterski is one of many high-profile figures in the cryptocurrency industry facing criminal charges during the market downturn in 2022, with executives from the now-bankrupt FTX and Celsius also facing charges in the United States thereafter.

The GoPlus security team disclosed that a high-risk fraudulent Meme factory was recently discovered on the Robinhood Chain, with a transaction volume exceeding 9 million dollars in the past 30 days, involving hundreds of fraudulent Memes. The asset aggregation address is 0x8c3Bad30cc7563A2D0357F49509FFd063666bb00. As of September 28, 2026, the address balance is approximately 56.0635 ETH, equivalent to about 148,000 dollars; the address has a total of about 1,385 transactions, with the latest 400 transactions generating approximately 1,728.02 ETH in income and transferring out approximately 1,861.12 ETH; the two-way transaction volume is about 3,589.14 ETH, equivalent to about 9.49 million dollars.Direct evidence of "authorizing or selling tokens ---> liquidating ETH ---> transferring to the same aggregation address" was found in the high-risk associated Memes. The amount is the gross amount transferred into the aggregation system from the same project batch and does not represent net profit. The fraudulent Meme factory model mainly includes "new accounts shipping out ---> layered aggregation ---> fund recycling: 1. Creating Tokens based on industry hotspots; 2. Allocating Tokens to a large number of new EOAs with only 4 to 11 transactions; 3. Selling in segments through PonsV2Helper / UniversalRouter; 4. Emptying ETH to local aggregators or the main aggregation address (0x8c3bad); 5. Providing funds for the next round of projects, new wallets, and trading operations. The key to this fraud model is: 1. Using a large number of new wallets to hide the actual concentration of chips; 2. Segmentally selling by these wallets to create the illusion of multiple independent traders; 3. After the shipment is completed, funds flow into the same aggregation system; 4. Reinvesting the profits from old projects into the next round.On-chain researcher Wazz recently disclosed that a suspected continuous Rug gang initiated at least 53 Robinhood Chain Memes within about two months and extracted approximately 18.43 million dollars from them. Their main tactic is to control most of the token supply using 70 to 200 wallets, then reinvest the profits from the previous round into the next round. This case is similar to the fraudulent model in this case, but there is currently no evidence to indicate that it is the same gang.

Recently, the Beijing Shijingshan police successfully intercepted a new type of cross-border telecom fraud case, freezing 780,000 yuan in involved funds and returning it to the victims. In this case, 53-year-old Mr. Liu received a fraudulent call from abroad while accompanying his child studying overseas. The scammer impersonated domestic police, fabricated false allegations of money laundering, and induced him to urgently request money transfers from his family in China.The funds were subsequently transferred into the accounts of two other Chinese students studying abroad. Upon investigation, it was found that these three individuals were all victims of the same fraud gang, exhibiting characteristics of "multiple scams in one case, with victims serving as money laundering tools for each other." The scammers first transferred funds into the accounts of some victims, then coerced them into exchanging for U currency to assist in the transfer, which was highly concealed and involved complex cross-border links. The police successfully "awakened" the victims through patient persuasion, preventing greater losses.

The U.S. stock BNB Treasury Company Nano Labs issued a risk warning stating that its founder Jack Kong's personal X account has been compromised. Recently, the content related to tokens and artificial intelligence trading models posted on that account is neither authorized by him nor the company.The company emphasizes that it has not issued or endorsed any related token projects and reminds users not to click on suspicious links, transfer funds to related contracts, or trust private messages, to guard against fraud.

The WeChat Security Center has released a governance announcement regarding the crackdown on organizers and promoters of illegal activities such as pyramid schemes and fraud. Recently, some black and gray market accounts have falsely claimed to be "national projects," "ethnic asset unfreezing," and "blockchain virtual currencies, stablecoins," using high returns as bait to lure users into groups and implement pyramid-style "referral" schemes. Subsequently, they induce users to input their account passwords and download fraudulent imitation apps through forged links, ultimately committing property fraud or account theft.WeChat officials stated that once verified, they will take tiered penalties against violating accounts based on the severity of the circumstances, in accordance with relevant laws and platform regulations. This includes banning community functions, restricting feature usage, and permanently banning accounts. They also remind users to be wary of Ponzi schemes that claim to be associated with blockchain but lack substantive technology and applications, and to avoid participating in paying entry fees, developing downlines, and downloading applications from unofficial channels.

According to Caixin, the internal situation of Cambodia's first publicly disclosed telecom fraud base "Zone 8" has been revealed. This "fraud city" is the largest telecom fraud base in Cambodia, capable of accommodating up to 20,000 workers who have been trafficked and forced to engage in online scams, operated by the Cambodian company Legend Innovation.Blockchain analysis firm Elliptic found that the operating company has connections to the Prince Group. Legend Innovation is accused of having links to the Prince Group, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the U.K., through company phone numbers, board activities, and related business records. Notably, the phone number registered by Legend Innovation appeared in the records of a real estate company that is alleged to belong to the Prince Group's network. The park once had a physical store for Huiwang Payment, allowing personnel to exchange cryptocurrency and cash, while Huiwang Logistics was accused of providing freight services between Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the park.

The social media platform X has filed a lawsuit in London against two British residents, accusing them of defrauding the company through the Creator Revenue Sharing program. X Internet Unlimited Company and X Corp. stated in the lawsuit that Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa, and unidentified accomplices operated multiple X accounts in collaboration, using likes, retweets, and replies to create a false impression of genuine interaction to increase their share of revenue from the program. X was acquired last year by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI for $33 billion.The plaintiffs named a total of 9 accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy, @saylordocs, @TrendingBitcoin, @Kalshibacktest, and @PolyBackTest. X accused several accounts of posting identical or highly similar cryptocurrency-related content within minutes of each other, with one post interval being only 11 seconds; at the same time, these accounts had overlapping financial and identity information, such as the Stripe account associated with @Bitcoin_Teddy being registered under the name "Stefan Mann," while the associated bank account and email both belonged to Sen.X claimed it suffered a loss of £207,384 (approximately $277,000) due to program expenditures and is seeking at least £75,000 (approximately $100,000) for investigation, analysis, remediation, and prevention of further violations.

According to CriptoNoticias, the Spanish Civil Guard and National Police have respectively cracked down on two cryptocurrency-related criminal cases, capturing or identifying a total of 48 individuals involved.Among them, one Ponzi scheme resulted in losses of approximately 327,000 euros for 113 investors; another criminal network implemented fraud through phishing, fake rental advertisements, and other methods, converting illegal gains into cryptocurrency to evade tracking, causing losses exceeding 430,000 euros.

In February, a company that handles debit card transactions for Polymarket's U.S. betting platform reported that fraudsters are flooding the app. Users are linking stolen debit cards to their Polymarket U.S. accounts, attempting to place bets and withdraw funds to clean cards or accounts under their control, with thieves trying to make off with at least $10 million.The processor once rejected over 80% of deposits as fraudulent, far exceeding the industry standard of about 1%. Polymarket employees raised concerns to CEO Shayne Coplan. Insiders said the compliance team's response to Coplan was shocking: continue to grow, and if regulators find out, just pay the fines.

On September 14, blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs released a report revealing that fake YouTube tutorials lured 224 victims into deploying and funding malicious smart contracts under the guise of building AI-based crypto arbitrage bots, resulting in the theft of 274.6 ETH. TRM identified a total of 234 contracts deployed by the victims, with funds ultimately flowing into six collection addresses controlled by the operators. The stolen ETH was worth approximately $517,000 at the time of the transfer, with a median loss of 1 ETH per incident.Unlike common wallet theft attacks, this scam did not involve phishing links, spoofed domains, or malicious authorization prompts. Victims chose the tutorials themselves, copied the code, deployed the contracts, and funded them from their own wallets, with each step authorized by the victims themselves. As a result, wallet security warnings and phishing blacklists could not be triggered. TRM discovered nine nearly identical YouTube tutorials disguised as different creators, using AI-generated virtual hosts and voiceovers, promising to build fully automated crypto trading bots with Claude, and guiding victims to a compiler website controlled by the operators, some of which mimicked the commonly used Remix development environment.In one variant analyzed by TRM, a backend script would discard the source code pasted by the victims and retrieve another contract from the operator's server, with the clean code displayed on the screen never being on-chain. The replaced contract accepted deposits and transferred any balance over 0.05 ETH to the operators when the victims pressed Start or Withdraw, with no arbitrage logic or AI functionality included in the contract.

According to on-chain detective ZachXBT's post on his personal channel, Revolut allegedly failed to identify a fraudulent request, resulting in the personal identification information (PII) of some users being leaked. The leaked information includes copies of passports or driver's licenses and verification selfies, account statements, IBANs, withdrawal records, complete transaction histories including Bitcoin transactions, as well as names, birth dates, occupations, home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.ZachXBT stated that the number of affected users may be limited, but it appears to target high-net-worth individuals. It is reported that several Revolut users received related security alert emails yesterday.

According to CNN, FTX founder SBF filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, seeking a new trial and the reversal of a court order that sentenced him to forfeit $11 billion in assets. SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024. Prosecutors stated that he directed the transfer of billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency exchange FTX to his controlled hedge fund Alameda Research, which were then used for high-risk investments, political donations, and personal expenses.The appeal filed to the Supreme Court primarily involves a technical legal issue regarding the submission of evidence during the trial, as well as whether SBF should be allowed to prove that his investments ultimately were profitable and sufficient to compensate for the losses suffered by FTX customers. Additionally, he argued that the forfeiture of $11 billion in assets violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits excessive fines.

Some criminal gangs use "free credit card repayment" as bait to lure ordinary people into providing credit card and identity information. They then launder illegal funds from overseas gambling, telecom fraud, and other activities by fabricating consumption and other means, and subsequently contact currency dealers to exchange for virtual currency to transfer abroad.

According to CoinDesk, a 22-year-old man from Singapore will plead guilty in one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in the United States.The scammer posed as customer service representatives from Google and Gemini, tricking an investor into handing over Bitcoin worth $240 million.