“Scammers are now on Instagram. Crypto advice can be from hacked accounts to friends, familiar circles

New Delhi: “Wow, this is so amazing I can’t believe that Bitcoin mining is real. I am happy to inform you all about investing and earning in Bitcoin mining company within 3 hours. I invested 50k in 3 hours, I have earned 500k… Here’s the proof. Hurry up and DM @bianca_maria_fx.”

If a story like this appears on an Instagram account of even friends and acquaintances, there is a high chance that it will be hacked by crypto scammers. Even worse, the compromised account is used to target unsuspecting victims without the user’s knowledge.

A casual glance will hardly give any hints about the scammers who go around with their secret mission to cheat people who want to make a quick buck.

Scammers post messages like the one mentioned above with branded accounts along with the photos of Instagram users to give it a real look. Sometimes the caption looks like a screenshot of the phone background. Messages from “Paypal” or “bank account” complete the scam job.

When users click on the tagged accounts, the profiles that usually pop up are those of women’s photos pulled from Google, along with those of fancy cars and posts claiming profits made through cryptocurrency.

Messages like “Hey! Here the new Paypal balance is $10,010.07. The money hit my PayyPal now, it’s not the cape, you want to give her a try”, or “You guys thought it was fake, well, I just reinvested $1000 dollars for quite a long time and got back $10,000 dollars in just 3 hours thanks a lot” try to attract potential crypto users.

Unsuspecting Instagram users will have no idea that such photos are posted through hacked profiles. Post after post, scammers post screenshots and messages to show how individual PayPal balances have swelled or how Bitcoin mining is “real and legitimate”. “You thought it was fake, well, I reinvested $1000 dollars for quite a long time and got back $10,000 dollars in just 3 hours, thank you very much” – messages like these will be visible to unsuspecting victims.

In June, cyber security company CloudSEK came out with a report on a high-profile scam in which Indian investors were robbed of Rs 1,000 crore by fraudsters. The scam, CoinEgg, uses “fake domains and social media accounts to lure users into investing in fake exchanges,” it said.

A senior Delhi Police officer said fraudsters keep deleting accounts or changing the name of their Instagram handles.

“Furthermore, by the time a user is defrauded, and by the time the complaint is received, the money has already been siphoned off. Cryptocurrency scams have increased over the years, especially since the Covid outbreak. With the promise of quick money, the innocent are lured. In some cases, they also gain remote access to the user’s phone,” the officer said.

Also read: Millennials in India are making riskier investments, to boost returns shaken by inflation

Things get scarier

In a crypto scam case, a 20-year-old student at Delhi received a call from an international number asking her to record a video and send it to that number via WhatsApp. She was blackmailed into mentioning that bitcoin mining is legal and profitable if she wanted her account restored.

In the past week, ThePrint came across at least seven such cases. The pattern was almost the same, and most of the messages had more or less the same language.

In one of these cases, a 25-year-old student based in Assam realized that his account was fraudulent after a friend called him the next day after seeing a series of posts about crypto trading.

Things got scarier after his friend messaged him on Instagram asking about “investments”. That’s when the hacker who impersonated the student started sending messages about it, as given below:

User 1 – “are you serious”

Hacker – “real and legit 100% safe bitcoin mining investment platform. I invest with a sum of $500 dollars in less than 3 hours. I got $5000 dollars as profit. Are you interested?”

Hacker – “This is her page, follow her now and send her a message and start investing in bitcoin mining.”

User 1 – “how much did you invest”

Hacker – “$500 is 40,000 Rupees”

The next day, the user sent a meme with a dialogue from the Bollywood movie ‘Phir Hera Holiday’ — “25 din mai crorepati” – as a joke. The hacker replied: “real and legit 100% sure”. It took the user a whole day to recover his Instagram account.

None of the users above filed an official police complaint. ThePrint contacted a Meta spokesperson via email. This report will be updated when responses are received.

When approached by ThePrint for a statement, Assam Director General of Police (DGP) Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said, “We have received some complaints on the matter and are looking into it.”

Several ways to defraud users

There have been other cases of cryptocurrency scams on Instagram as well. For example, some users also receive private messages on chat from strangers, mostly women.

The conversation starts normally, but after the first messages it turns to crypto investments. One of the most used tricks is to put up investment links and leader handles on Instagram posts. Scammers pose as crypto trading experts when Instagram users hook them up via instant messaging.

While the names of well-known crypto exchanges like Binance are being dropped to win users’ trust, scammers are sharing the link of a fake crypto exchange pretending to be the legitimate company.

So how can users avoid falling for scammers? One of the ways to identify scammers is to keep track of the language used by hackers and impersonators while posting messages on Instagram. A quick scan through these messages will show repeated use of words written like “all”, “legit”. Lack of punctuation and grammar can flag users about a possible scammer at work.

“The trend of posting phishing encryption links has been noticed across social media platforms. Users must change their passwords whenever they discover that someone else’s account has been hacked. Also, one should avoid clicking on any of these links on social media, or interact with random accounts discussing cryptocurrency,” said the aforementioned senior Delhi Police officer.

(Editing by Tony Rai)

Also read: Bitcoin Era Reviews (Australia & Canada): Is It Legit Or Is It A Scam?