Investment scams soar as trade explodes – NBC 6 South Florida

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Crypto trading has exploded over the past year and a half, and scammers have taken notice. They are finding new ways to pounce and fly, and these crimes have skyrocketed recently.

Hatim Mursi says he had his life savings stolen from a cryptocurrency investment scam, over half a million dollars.

“I felt very vulnerable and I felt violated,” Mursi said. He says the funds are “completely, completely, completely gone”.

The Fort Lauderdale resident says it all started when he received what he thought at the time to be a bad message on WhatsApp. It was a message he thought was intended for a friend.

“This is from someone who is supposedly confused,” Mursi said. “The person apologized and then responded by saying, ‘Oh, you look nice. “”

That’s when he says the online relationship started.

“They make you feel like they’re very smart, very caring,” he said.

They discussed everything from music and politics to business, but only by text.

“They asked me if I was interested in cryptocurrency,” Mursi said. “I never really invested in crypto.

He said the person followed up. “It was, ‘Oh, by the way, here are the trading sites.'”

At first, the person referred him to legitimate trading platforms where Mursi said he decided to open an account.

“She started sharing links with me to this new venture,” Mursi said. “Then said they were about to start trading their crypto.”

He said the woman claimed to have inside information. “Then she introduced me to this website. Where this is the only website where you can actually buy this coin, ”Mursi said.

He did some research on the company and thought the site looked legitimate, so he decided to open an account at “Owllex.com”.

In order to purchase this supposed new coin, Mursi said he had to fund the website’s virtual wallet with other cryptocurrencies. So he bought Tether, a well-known crypto coin, from Binance.US, a well-known legitimate trading platform, and transferred the funds to the new site.

“I was like, well, Binance has been around forever,” Mursi said. “If they allowed me to do that, that’s something that made me feel a little bit at ease.”

He even tried to transfer funds to Binance and said it worked.

“Binance is now accepting the return of the transaction, I think okay this is a valid site,” Mursi said.

Mursi then started moving thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency after that.

“Every time I add you see the cryptocurrency going up. Up. Standing up,” Mursi said. “I had seen around $ 35,000 in a week go over $ 400,000”

It sounded too good to be true – because it was.

Mursi began to become suspicious. He said the company continued to push deadlines, as it did with the chief coin official.

He found scam stories similar to his online and discovered that the website had multiple aliases.

But it was too late. In early October, the Owllex.com website went down, and it still is.

Mursi has lost all possible means of accessing his money.

“For a whole week, I just couldn’t sleep,” he said.

The Florida attorney general’s office received nearly 100 complaints about these types of scams with a significant increase in October.

Even more shocking, according to the Federal Trade Commission, from October 2020 to March of this year there were 12 times as many crypto investment scams reported compared to the same period the previous year.

“We’ve seen a lot of these types of cryptocurrency scams start on social media,” said Christopher Leach, an attorney for FTC staff. “Someone who approaches you in this form, whom you do not know, says to come and invest with me, it is a red flag there. “

He says he is aware of general claims about specific or high returns. “He claims you can double, triple, 10 times your money. That’s a very clear red flag,” Leach said.

He says it’s important to do your research, check reviews, and be wary of someone pushing you to invest immediately.

A Binance.US spokesperson sent NBC 6 a statement saying, “There are bad players in every industry. It is the responsibility of all legitimate professionals in the industry to help educate our users about common scams and to do thorough research before using or making any transactions with unregulated platforms. At Binance.US, the safety of our customers and their assets is our top priority. As a result, we have content available for our users, such as safety and security tips and education points on common cryptocurrency scams. Additionally, our security, risk and compliance teams monitor account activity, including blockchain transactions to and from Binance.US. Teams identify and blacklist addresses associated with suspicious or malicious behavior and work with law enforcement to remove malicious sites.

“I think the novelty of crypto really offers fertile ground for people who want to scam in this regard,” Leach said.

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