US uses first-of-its-kind email seizure to disrupt $5M crypto scam

A Brooklyn-based crypto police unit has seized a scam network’s email list and used it to warn more than 1,200 potential victims.

The Virtual Currency Unit used the new technique to bring down the network whose members posed as financial advisers from “stocks-finance.com” to target the borough’s Russian community.

The scheme is estimated to have netted $1 million from victims in Brooklyn and $5 million throughout the US.

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced the conclusion of the investigation yesterday which resulted in the shutdown of 70 fraudulent domains.

“For the first time anywhere in this type of probe, Brooklyn prosecutors were able to execute warrants to seize and take control of the server, cutting off the scammers from the victims, their contact lists, and address books,” the press release claimed.

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Gonzalez said, “Since recovering lost funds is often impossible because they’re typically quickly cashed overseas, we focus on disruption and education.”

Two weeks ago, the same police crypto unit announced that it had shut down 40 phony NFT marketplaces after it was tipped off by an 85-year-old painter who had lost their life savings.

The painter was scammed out of $135,000 by somebody pretending to be an art dealer who wanted to convert his art into NFTs. The scammer claimed that the victim’s NFTs had made $300,000 and that the exorbitant sum was needed to access these profits.