Fake Green passes in Italy for cryptocurrency

 

The growing popularity of digital currencies among the world gave chance to frauds and scams for some people. Not only cryptocurrency prices, even scams are also raised on the same level. 

It is shocking to know that people in the United States of America have lost over $80 million in cryptocurrency frauds for the period between October 20 and April 21. Same people were repeatedly cheated again and again and people who are in their 20s and 30s are the worst hit in crypto scams. These age groups lost more on investment scams than any other type of fraud.

Italian government has decided to issue Covid-19 health passes to the people to check the pandemic. The so-called Green Pass allows Italians who have already received at least one coronavirus vaccine shot, have recently recovered from the virus, or have tested negative to go to cinemas, gyms, museums, restaurants, etc. Fraudsters have used this as a chance to cheat the people. The scammers offer fake Covid-19 health passes to the people who wanted to bypass the prescribed formal procedure in exchange of cryptocurrencies. They preferred digital payments for their illegal service. Reportedly, scammers charge 500 Euros per one Covid-19 health pass. Analysts believed that fraudsters choose cryptocurrency payment methods because of the anonymity which is the key feature of blockchain technology. The most desirable cryptocurrencies for the criminals were Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Monero (XMR).          

How to avoid cryptocurrency scams?

An individual investor can do extensive research before investing in the stock market. There is a certain level of security in the stock market because of having regulatory bodies like SEC in America and SEBI in India. They have the details of listed companies including names of the Directors and company registered address. You can’t find any such facility in crypto. It is very hard to come to a conclusion which is the real company and which is not in crypto. An investor should have learned and got to know thorough knowledge on cryptocurrencies before investing.

·         Fake Exchanges: There are many cryptocurrency exchanges across the world. But only a limited number of exchanges is permitted to operate in the U.S. Invest only in reputation and well-known exchange.

·         Review the URLs: Everything is getting copied and cloned in this digital technology era. Popular cryptocurrency websites and Apps are no exception in this regard. People can divert your attention by just changing one letter in the name of the cryptocurrency or company like 0 to O and 1 to I.

·         Scamming Mails: You received mail from a legitimate cryptocurrency company. Everything looks similar but a few times they proved as scamming mails.

·         Beware of celebrity endorsements: It is very easy to mislead people for companies with celebrity promotions. Many followed Elon Musk twitter after he promoted Bitcoin and he stopped offering Bitcoin for Tesla quoting environmental reasons. That made a huge impact on Bitcoin price after May this year. People who bought Bitcoin by following Elon Musk twitter suffered losses. Individual discretion is important in crypto trading.