The financial regulator said that in 2019, scammers began to attract more funds to invest in cryptocurrency. The largest pyramid AirBitClub raised over 500 million rubles, about 60 thousand people were injured
Last year, financial pyramids began to use promises to invest in cryptocurrency more often, Izvestia writes with reference to the Central Bank of Russia. The largest fraudulent scheme of the last year, AirBitClub, attracted over 500 million rubles from about 60 thousand people. The money was allegedly collected to issue tokens and earn money on their rate, but in fact, the participant could only sell the local currency to other deceived investors.
Earlier, Rosfinmonitoring supported the idea of banning cryptocurrencies. The head of the department, Yuri Chikhanchin, explained that otherwise the approval of a new type of assets could lead to the risk of new financial pyramids such as MMM.
In 2019, criminals stole $ 4.3 billion in cryptocurrency. The most popular way to steal funds is pyramid schemes. Fraudsters presented them as attractive investment opportunities. One of these schemes turned out to be the PlusToken platform, which raised over $ 2 billion.