In Brief:
- Indians have visited crypto scam sites almost 9.6 million times in 2021.
- The top scam sites visited were dualmine.com, coinpayu.com, hackertyper.net, coingain.app, and adbtc.top.
- Scammers have been contacting potential crypto investors via many social media platforms.
According to a report from blockchain tracking firm Chainalysis, Indian users have visited websites running crypto scams almost 9.6 million times last year.
The report reveals that the number of Indians visiting fraudulent cryptocurrency websites has decreased significantly since 2020. Indians visited crypto scam sites more than 17.8 million times two years ago.
The top crypto scam websites visited by Indians over the last year were dualmine.com, coinpayu.com, hackertyper.net, coingain.app, and adbtc.top,
In 2021, these sites solely garnered 4.6 million visits from Indians.
A few of these online sites also offer bogus investment plans to crypto investors, which has resulted in cases such as the Morris Coin fraud.
For example, earlier this month, at least 900 people in Kerala were scammed out of over $161 million by a crypto scam.
The victims were allegedly deceived into investing in an initial coin offering issued by a Kerala man for the non-existent Morris Coin.
A lot of fraudsters have also been contacting potential crypto investors via messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
In November of last year, the official Twitter account of meme coin Shiba Inu warned investors about potential scams spreading on Telegram and other social networking platforms.
CoinSwitch Kuber, an Indian crypto exchange platform, has also added warning features to their platforms to alert investors when they are considering the purchase of any volatile or relatively unfamiliar cryptocurrency.
According to Chainalysis’ report on global crypto crimes, crypto scams snatched around $14 billion in 2021. The scams were led by a new method known as rug pulls.
