Brooklyn prosecutors and the FBI took apart an international crypto scam that stole tens of millions of dollars from Russian-speaking Americans, many of them Brooklyn residents. The playbook is the oldest one in the book: sell the mark an "investment", then come back and sell them a fake way out. Hamsters, meet the second scam.
▪️ Step one: victims got pulled into an "elaborate investment scheme", and the money went into cryptocurrency that investigators later traced. The pitch was the product.
▪️ Step two: weeks after the theft, the same crew called the same people back, promising they could recover the funds. That's a recovery scam, and it feeds on people who already lost everything.
▪️ The Brooklyn DA's Virtual Currency Unit traced the coins and mapped the tech stack behind the operation, then the FBI came in to pull it apart.
▪️ Prosecutors say it's one of the largest cyber enforcement actions a local prosecutor's office has ever run. Nice PR. Now go count the arrests.
▪️ Same office, last year: a man who impersonated crypto exchange support staff took nearly $16 million from about 100 victims. He pleaded guilty and was recently sentenced to up to 12 years.
📊 Scam sites nuked:
241📊 Servers yanked:
112Got someone in your chat already burned by one of these 'investment' outfits? The recovery guy who calls next is the same scam in a new hat. The takedown hit domains and servers, and the release says nothing about arrests of the people running it. The sites are gone; the operators aren't mentioned as caught. Domains are cheap, people are not. Never pay anyone to get your money back.
💬 «When scammers halfway around the world target Brooklyn residents, they should know they are not beyond our reach.» — Eric Gonzalez
🔮 Sites are down. The recovery crew that called victims back twice? Still not in cuffs. Who's next?
@tontiger_fam
