A simple Bitcoin scam on Facebook ended up hurting countless investors and wreaking havoc before it was exposed by a report on the matter.
In Canada, the topic of cryptocurrencies eventually gained more attention, especially in the last month of February when striking truck drivers received donations in Bitcoin. With that, the local government launched a hunt for the sector and blocked brokers, a case of major global repercussions.
And after seeing the case in his country and the war in Ukraine, the president of Ontario Research & Associates Rosenberg said, David Rosenberg, stated that Bitcoin is not a store of value. He further stated that when gold rises, Bitcoin falls, showing that he is skeptical of cryptocurrencies.
“The decline in the Bitcoin/Gold ratio is a testament to the belief that cryptocurrency was never a currency (‘asset class’?) you could rely on in difficult times. Neither safe nor secure – just a high beta correlation with the more speculative elements of risk trading.”
The dip in the Bitcoin/Gold ratio reflects the belief that crypto was never a currency (“asset class”??) you could rely on in difficult times. Neither safe nor a haven – just a high beta correlation with the most speculative elements of the risk-on-trade.
— David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) February 24, 2022
Regardless of the criticism he made of Bitcoin, scammers took advantage of the comment to hit the unsuspecting.
Fake Facebook profile staged a coup on Facebook, raising nearly R$700,000
Even with David Rosenberg being a major critic of Bitcoin in Canada, several profiles were created with him in the country. These fake profiles also ended up using your company’s image to attract investors.
And that plot was uncovered by an investigation by fact-checking website Snopes, who discovered the danger in a comment on his own Facebook profile. An alleged investor of David published that he had invested in Bitcoin with him and had good returns.
Of course, capturing another fake profile eventually caught the attention of the company, who went after it and discovered the scam. Fake accounts led victims to the fake profile of David Roserberg, when they were given a Bitcoin wallet address to deposit.
The scammer’s address is 32eCbchcNBEYWtDWVuKXeDNJ4rcXoKC5LW, which has already received 3.4 Bitcoins, possibly from victims of the fraud. With the Bitcoin price in Real today, the value is R $ 673 thousand.
After Meta was warned about the fraud, he identified that scammers could be from Nigeria
The journalist who noticed the fraud, Jordan Liles, discovered the case of a Bitcoin scam operated by the social network at the Meta (ex-Facebook) company. After the company’s investigation, David Rosenberg’s fake account was removed from the social network.
In addition, Meta revealed that the accesses were done by people from Nigeria, i.e. the coup may have been applied from another country against Canadian investors.
Anyway, David’s fake account only had 100 followers while the official one has thousands. That is, victims who had researched the situation a little better could have avoided handing over 3.4 BTCs to this fraud, which is nothing new in the market at all.
And in social networks, getting high-yield investment proposals becomes a problem. Recently, a woman lost BRL 2.9 million in a cryptocurrency scam on LinkedIn, showing that fraud is all over the internet in addition to Facebook and Twitter, and holders of these coins should be suspicious of miraculous proposals.
Source: Live Coins
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
