How cryptocurrency is stolen

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, the local FBI office in San Francisco warned the public of an increase in romance scams based on complaints filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Such schemes include creating fake accounts and convincing careless investors – both men and women – to transfer funds under the pretext of romantic gifts.

Here’s a quote from the FBI warning, in which agency officials share details of what’s going on. The replica was published by the news outlet Cointelegraph.

Victims at the FBI’s San Francisco division lost more than $64 million to romance scams last year. In 2020, the losses amounted to just over $35 million.

Consequently, the scheme is becoming increasingly popular. In addition, the number of people who fall for the tricks is also growing.

FBI announcement

In 2021 alone, the Intelligence and Security Service recorded 742 fraud complaints in the Northern District of California. In 2020 and 2019, there were “only” 720 and 526 complaints of this nature, respectively. Experts continue.

The San Francisco FBI has noticed a growing trend of scammers pretending to be lovers convincing their victims to send them money to invest or trade in cryptocurrency.

Consequently, victims are directly asked to transfer digital assets under various pretexts. Which means, in effect, they are saying goodbye to their money in person.

Beware of scammers!

A typical romance scam begins by gaining the trust of victims, who are then redirected to fraudulent platforms where they are offered the opportunity to ‘invest’. The scammers allow investors to withdraw some profits from initial transactions to prove their ‘trustworthiness’, but then the victims are forced to invest more money or cryptocurrencies.

When the victim is ready to withdraw funds again, the scammers come up with reasons why it is allegedly impossible. The victim is told that additional taxes need to be paid, or the minimum account balance required for withdrawal has not been reached.

However, the scammers usually stop responding after the victims refuse to deposit the funds. In such cases, the FBI recommends contacting the police, as well as the banks that carried out the financial transactions. In general, however, the experts recommend the following rules to avoid running into scammers.

• do not take investment advice solely from one person on the internet;
• not divulge your financial information;
• not fall for promises of unrealistic returns in a very short period of time;
• be “wary of people who claim to have exclusive investment opportunities.

We, on the other hand, recommend not to trust anyone with your coins and ideally keep them in hardware wallets. If the money is in a cryptocurrency exchange, make sure you have two-factor authentication and other account protections in place.

Warnings about cryptojackers are not just coming from the FBI. Recently, the CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance warned on his Twitter that a massive fraud campaign with phishing attacks and SMS spam has been deployed against the platform’s customers. Here’s his rejoinder.

There is a large-scale phishing campaign online via SMS with links to cancel withdrawals from the platform. They lead to a fake website that collects your personal information. NEVER follow the links in these messages!

In this case, scammers are trying to create a panic mood in the victim and make him or her rush to the fake site. Usually such resources force entry of personal details, as well as additional passwords and combinations. Other scammers target mnemonic phrases of 12, 18 or 24 words that give access to the contents of a particular blockchain address. Naturally, any such information should not be shared.

Example of SMS from scammers

As you can see, the danger of fraud in the cryptosphere is still very high, which negatively affects Bitcoin’s reputation. However, as cryptocurrencies grow in popularity, such schemes will be less effective, as more people will be aware of them.


We believe that cryptocurrency fraud will always exist and work, as the field of digital assets is constantly attracting new users. To keep yourself safe, it's a simple matter of not sharing personal information, passwords, and secret codes. In addition, the basics of blockchain should be thoroughly researched and understood to avoid getting caught up in more complex schemes.


More useful information can be found in our Millionaire Crypto Chat. There we will discuss other important news that affect cryptocurrencies in one way or another.