Amazon’s Fake Crypto Token Investment Scam Steals Bitcoin From Victims

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A new cryptocurrency scam is abusing the Amazon brand to trick potential investors into handing them Bitcoin (BTC).

Cryptocurrency and digital token scams have become a common threat to investors and the general public today.

Even though regulators around the world are cracking down on fraud — through tax laws, registration of securities offerings, stricter rules around cryptocurrency advertisements, and closely monitoring initial coin offerings exchange (ICO), exit scams, raffles and theft is still rampant.

Interest in cryptocurrency – and now NFTs – continues to grow, providing fertile ground for new scams to appear daily.

Chainalysis estimates that fraudsters received approximately $14 billion in deposits in 2021.

On Thursday, cybersecurity researchers from Akamai Technologies described a new fraudulent campaign that leverages Amazon’s name to promote a fraudulent “Amazon to create its own digital token” scheme.

Generating panic and encouraging victims to make a rash decision are common tactics used in various scams, and this is no exception. In Amazon’s scheme, fraudsters imposed a “time-sensitive” lure to give individuals the impression that they might lose a lucrative investment opportunity.

The campaign began with the posting of fake social media posts to groups interested in the cryptocurrency space. If users clicked on a post, they were directed to a fake “CNBC Decoded” news website that included an article about the soon-to-be-published “Amazon Crypto Token”.

The cyberattackers gave visitors about 30 seconds to read the fake version before they were automatically redirected to a domain that offered presale tokens. The website in question was fully functional and required the registration of an email account confirmation and the creation of a user profile.

Akamai Technologies

“The website included social engineering techniques that presented a fake progress bar, indicating that the tokens were about to sell, adding pressure to the victim’s purchase decision,” Akamai explains.

At this point, visitors were asked to then pay for the presale tokens with their own cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Since the tokens are non-existent, these funds then ended up in the wallets of the attackers.

Another lure is also presented – a fake referral program that promises rewards if users refer friends and family. This can extend the scope of the token scam on behalf of the attackers without further effort on their part.

In total, most visitors to the fake token landing pages were using mobile devices (98%). The distribution of mobile operating systems used is fairly homogeneous but leans towards Android terminals (56%), followed by Apple iOS (42%).

The majority of victims are in North America, South America and Asia.

“Based on our research, we predict that crypto scams will continue to generate a lot of nefarious activity in the 2022 threat landscape,” the researchers commented.

Akamai reported its findings to Amazon.

Update 23.08 GMT: An Amazon spokesperson told ZDNet:

“We take any attempt to misuse our brand seriously. We maintain a site to help customers identify scams, including fake web pages. Here’s how to tell if an email, phone call, text or a webpage is really from Amazon.”

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