As the number of users of cryptocurrency is constantly growing, cyber attacks are also consistently increasing. Recently, the popular Francisco Valdevino da Silva, also called “Sheikh dos Bitcoins,” was caught in a Brazilian crypto scam. Silva’s group was suspected of scamming nearly 4 billion Brazilians and some of the users from 10 different countries.
During the raids, Brazilian police seized huge amounts of cash, gold biscuits, and luxury items that were valued at up to 780 million euros, which were robbed in a cryptocurrency scheme.
They started the investigation in March in Brazil from the information collected by the United States authorities via Interpol. After receiving information from the authorities, Brazilian police started investigating, and they found that 100 users were affected in three Brazilian states and thousands of users from outside of Brazil, including the United States.
The names of the scammers were not given in the data, but the Brazilian stated that the attack was carried out by the leader of the group, da Silva. Sheikh dos Bitcoins interacted with different family members and created a group to steal the assets of the users.
The federal police stated that “The main suspect formed a criminal organization with various family members to appropriate the amounts invested in cryptocurrencies by the victims.”
The attack was carried out with perfect planning by Silva’s group. They used the Ponzi pyramid technique to carry out the attack. A Ponzi scheme is a method where victims believe that they are getting profit funds from the business activity, but they are unaware that the remaining investors are the reason for the funds. Besides the attack, they created their own digital currency and started trading in the market.
According to the reports, famous Brazilian personalities were affected by the attack. Some of the football players were scammed, including the daughter of famous television actor Xuxa. She was blindly trusted by them and invested an amount of 1.2 million reais. And the victims are promised a monthly refund of up to 20% of their invested capital.
Most recently, Ruja Ignatova was added to the FBI list of One Coin scammers. In 2014, they launched a fake cryptocurrency called “OneCoin.” As it is a never-existing currency, Ruja convinced people all over the world to invest in OneCoin. In 2017, after making a $4 billion (USD) profit, she went to Greece and has not been since until now.
A United States court recently ordered six months of prison or to pay $4 million (USD) for San Francisco-based Jerry Ji Guo for his major role in a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO).
