US FBI: scammers increasingly impersonate employees of crypto exchanges

Criminals call or write to victims posing as support specialists. Most often, they inform the cryptocurrency exchange user that there is a problem with their account. For example, someone is allegedly trying to hack into the account and steal funds from the account. Then the scammer promises that everything can be fixed, but you need to act quickly.

There may be several options to solve the "problem", in particular, to follow the link, which eventually turns out to be malicious, or to provide confidential information about the account. And since it must be done urgently, the victim does not always have time to understand the situation. That's what criminals are counting on.

US FBI officials advise cryptocurrency holders to check the phone number before answering the call. For example, you can look up the actual number on the official website of the exchange and call the numbers listed there yourself. In addition, you should not respond to messages from unknown contacts, no matter how urgent they are. And even more so, do not follow links, click on uploaded videos or attachments if their senders are unclear.

In early June, the U.S. FBI reported an increase in fraudulent ads for fake work-at-home jobs. To get a position, the candidate was asked to transfer a small amount of money in cryptocurrency to an account specified in the message. After the transaction was completed, the criminals never contacted their victim again.