The National Police warns of the exponential increase in the number of scams involving alleged investments in cryptocurrencies. The alleged investors, who are located in countries outside the European Union such as Albania, Cyprus, Malta or Lithuania, begin by requesting small amounts and offering unattainable returns. They operate on pages warned by the National Securities Market Commission that try to impersonate other official ones. One of the victims, who was defrauded of almost 140,000 euros, invested after watching a television documentary about crypto investments by a well-known actor.
Last year, the National Police collected a complaint from a citizen who had allegedly invested nearly 130,000 euros in cryptocurrencies after watching a documentary on French television where a well-known actor encouraged it.
Contacting the alleged investors who were advertised in the aforementioned documentary, he began his investments in cryptocurrencies with small amounts (250 euros) on web pages and Exchanges, guided by them.
Little by little, he increased the amounts invested until making transfers that reached 22,000 euros. Already this year, he decided to recover his money, at which point he realized it was a scam.
The police investigation allowed determining that the web pages and Exchanges used in the crypto investments were entities warned by the National Securities Market Commission, since they are not authorized to provide investment services. After tracing the funds invested in cryptocurrencies, the national police located the final beneficiary of the same, an Albanian citizen who received more than 13,000,000 dollars in his accounts.
Safety tips
- If you are interested in getting started in the world of investments, especially cryptocurrencies, go to official channels to train or inform yourself beforehand, such as the National Securities Market Commission, where you can verify from its website if a company is authorized or is otherwise of dubious reputation.
- Be wary of short-term investments and high profitability, it is usually a scam.
- Manage the basic concepts of the blockchain, such as wallet, public keys or private keys.
- Do not provide personal data through Whatsapp or Telegram, much less photographs of your identification documents.
- Anydesk is a remote desktop control application and once installed allows third parties to have control of the operating system remotely. It should therefore not be installed in any case beyond the official support provided by official software providers.
