{"id":21488,"date":"2023-03-15T16:10:04","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T00:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/15\/news-15219\/"},"modified":"2023-03-15T16:10:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T00:10:04","slug":"news-15219","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/15\/news-15219\/","title":{"rendered":"Investment fraud overtakes business email compromise as most reported fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has published its&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ic3.gov\/Media\/PDF\/AnnualReport\/2022_IC3Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">2022 Internet Crime Report<\/a>. One of the most notable points is that investment fraud has now&nbsp;overtaken&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/glossary\/business-email-compromise-bec\">business email compromise (BEC)<\/a>&nbsp;as the most reported and most damaging type of fraud.<\/p>\n<p>The numbers are based on the complaints reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). The IC3 serves as a public resource to submit reports of cyberattacks and incidents, which also allows the FBI to collect data and identify trends.<\/p>\n<p>To fully understand the shift we need to clarify what the report considers as investment fraud. The general definition of investment fraud used by the FBI is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Deceptive practice that induces investors to make purchases based on false information. These scams usually offer the victims large returns with minimal risk. (Retirement, 401K, Ponzi, Pyramid, etc.).&rdquo;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Within the category of investment fraud, a major role is taken up by crypto-investment fraud. Crypto-investment fraud saw an incredible growth in 2022, both in number of scams and in the amount of damage done. Investment fraud complaints increased from $1.45 billion in 2021 to $3.31 billion in 2022, which is a 127% rise. Within those complaints, cryptocurrency investment fraud rose from $907 million in 2021 to $2.57 billion in 2022, an increase of 183%.<\/p>\n<p>There are a number of different methods that cryptocurrency investment fraudsters deploy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Liquidity mining<\/strong>. Mostly by deploying social engineering, victims are tricked into linking their cryptocurrency wallet to a fraudulent liquidity mining application. Scammers then wipe out the victims&#8217; funds without notification or permission from the victim.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hacked social media accounts<\/strong>. Using several methods, scammers take over social media accounts to target existing friends of the hacked user.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Celebrity impersonation<\/strong>. By pretending to be a well-known celebrity or social figure, scammers&nbsp;begin a friendship with the targeted victim who is eventually enticed to learn how to invest in cryptocurrency or is given the opportunity to invest by the scammer.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Real estate professionals<\/strong>. The scammer contacts a real estate agent, usually offering to buy a very expensive property for cash or cryptocurrency. Once engaged, the fraudster will expose their control of fictitious accounts with a purported value of millions of dollars to entice them to engage in their investment scheme.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Employment<\/strong>. The victims are lured into applying for a fake position online at an investment firm or company supposedly affiliated with investing. Instead of a job, the victims are instead offered investment advice. The investment is fraudulent and designed to steal as much money from the target as possible.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2022\/11\/how-to-avoid-pig-butcher-scams\">Pig butchering<\/a><\/strong>. The fraudsters, posing as highly successful traders in cryptocurrency, entice victims to make purported investments in cryptocurrency providing fictitious returns to encourage additional investments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Mitigation<\/h2>\n<p>It is helpful to know, which methods are popular among scammers, so you can recognize them when you run into them.<\/p>\n<p>Some other points that can help you recognize fraud attempts are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stray messages for &ldquo;someone else&rdquo; appear out of the blue in a chat app, or on social media sites, or even work-related platforms.<\/li>\n<li>Common scam opening lines may involve: sports, golfing, travel, fitness.<\/li>\n<li>At some point the conversation will drift to topics like investments and\/or cryptocurrency.<\/li>\n<li>They will ask you to invest, or even take some of their money and use that instead just to try out how &ldquo;profitable&rdquo; it can be.<\/li>\n<li>If something looks too good to be true<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>More notable numbers taken from the report<\/h2>\n<p>The FBI report contains a lot more information. These are some numbers we thought you might find interesting:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2022, the IC3 received 800,944 complaints, which is a 5 percent decrease from 2021. However, the potential total loss has grown from $6.9 billion in 2021 to more than $10.2 billion in 2022.<\/li>\n<li>Total victim losses in 2022 amounted to $10.3 Billion<\/li>\n<li>The largest number of victims are aged 30-39 but the age group that lost the most money are 60+<\/li>\n<li>The number of reported ransomware incidents has decreased, but ransomware is still a big threat, especially to organizations in the healthcare, critical manufacturing, government, IT, and financial services sectors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Malwarebytes removes all remnants of ransomware and prevents you from getting reinfected. Want to learn more about how we can help protect your business? Get a free trial below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span class=\"blue-cta-bttn\" style=\"background-color: #0d3ecc; line-height: 50px; padding: 0 20px;\">TRY NOW<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/03\/investment-fraud-overtakes-business-email-compromise-as-most-reported-fraud\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<table cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" align=\"left\">\n<p>Categories: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/category\/news\" rel=\"category tag\">News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Categories: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/category\/scams\" rel=\"category tag\">Scams<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tags: FBI<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  IC3<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  2022<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  report<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  investment fraud<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  crypto-investment fraud<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  pig butchering<\/p>\n<p>Tags:  hacked socail media<\/p>\n<p>According to the FBI&#8217;s annual report, investment fraud overtook business email compromise as the most reported and most damaging type of fraud in 2022.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">\n<p><b>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/03\/investment-fraud-overtakes-business-email-compromise-as-most-reported-fraud\" title=\"Investment fraud overtakes business email compromise as most reported fraud\">Read more&#8230;<\/a>)<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/03\/investment-fraud-overtakes-business-email-compromise-as-most-reported-fraud\">Investment fraud overtakes business email compromise as most reported fraud<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\">Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[28124,28874,6627,28875,19980,28873,32,27053,11531,10574],"class_list":["post-21488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-28124","tag-crypto-investment-fraud","tag-fbi","tag-hacked-socail-media","tag-ic3","tag-investment-fraud","tag-news","tag-pig-butchering","tag-report","tag-scams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}