cryptocurrency is the new money of the modern world as investors in cryptocurrency are
increasing scammers are also making their way into this digital market how will you know which
crypto investment is legitimate and which one is just a con artist sitting behind the screen
trying to rob you we will tell you all about it in this video along with some of the biggest crypto
scams that ever happened so join us today to find out how much digital money was stolen
when these biggest scams happened and how the scammers pulled off these digital thefts
the first one to mention is the scam done by a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange thodex was
founded in 2017 in turkey it was the first ever cryptocurrency exchange that was trading in five
different cryptocurrencies at the same time this crypto exchange quickly gained popularity
and attracted investors from all around the world more than a thousand people invested their funds
in this cryptocurrency exchange in a single year it was the first largest exchange to set up in
the world it was also the first cryptocurrency exchange in the world to set up a bitcoin atm
in istanbul this was known as the stock exchange of cryptocurrency in its peak days as Thodex grows
with time it keeps adding more cryptocurrencies to its board soon it was trading in 20 different
digital currencies people love trading with this exchange because of the many fold benefits
for example you could use features like price alarm and stop loss everything was running
smoothly until march 23 2021 when the thodex founder farook fatih ozer reportedly went missing
when investors jumped to the thodex website that day to check their trading status they found
that the thodex server was down thodex told its users that it was just for temporary maintenance
and they would make the server online in some time but that did not happen the founder escaped taking
two billion dollars worth of investors funds with him but there's more to the story ozer the
founder of exchange convinced his investors to invest more money into thodex well obviously he
wanted to run with the cryptocurrency funds but he wanted to take as much money as he could one
month before this scam happened thodex announced that whoever registered to their platform would
get free dogecoins it promised its registrants not one not two but four million dogecoins with
this high price announced people took their phones and signed up to the sodex website
they invested their money thinking that they would make a profit in the easiest way what they did not
know was about ozer's plan to run away with their invested funds the registrants did not receive the
promised dogecoins and they also lost the invested money as soon as the ceo of thodex fled with the
money an arrest warrant was released for him and everyone linked to his company international
police also started looking for ozer police detained 62 people that were suspected to have
a connection with thodex and the escape of its ceo farooq fatih ozer fled to albania and is currently
living there he is not captured by the turkish or international police yet after escaping to albania
he made a public statement via the official fodex account he quoted that there were some unusual
fluctuations in the exchange only thirty thousand out of seven hundred thousand users were affected
by this he also refused all the allegations held against his name ozer also mentioned that thodex
faced many cyber attacks in the past years but never were its investors affected by the huge
losses suffered by the company in his statement ozer mentioned that he would return to turkey in
april 2021 but he has still not returned later the thodex twitter account was taken down by turkey's
investigation board contrary to ozer's statement none of the thodex users could access their
accounts or withdraw their investments after this big crypto scam the central bank of the republic
of turkey banned the use of crypto and any other digital assets it stated that doing transactions
or payments in digital money is highly risky plus there is always a possibility of a big loss
it also prohibited all the other companies operating in turkey from making payments
using cryptocurrency moving on only if two billion dollars scams sound small to you here's another
big crypto scam that we witnessed in this century it happened when two brothers from south africa
went missing with 3.6 billion dollars of investors fund it may be the biggest cryptocurrency fraud
that has ever happened here is how it started afrocrypt was a crypto exchange founded in 2019
by two brothers raiz khajii and amir khajii they started this company in johannesburg south africa
cryptocurrency was not new to the world at that time most people knew about this digital currency
what they did not know was who to trust when these two khaji brothers started the new crypto exchange
they announced a ten percent net return on their investments every day yes every day it seemed like
a golden offer to the people living there the kg brothers knew what they were doing they were
pros in algorithmic trading and marketing these two skills helped them quickly gain the trust
of investors people started to invest in their company not in the thousands but in millions the
first red flag was when the ceo of afrocrypt told its investors that there was a hack in
the system and advised them not to report it they told the investors that if they reported the hack
the company would not be able to restore its position as quickly but the investors noticed
that something else was going on they hired lawyers to draft the procedure of restoring their
digital assets from their companies however it was already too late the khaji brothers had already
transferred the investors funds it happened just seven days before the investors noticed the hazard
all the investors lost access to their accounts their funds and bitcoins in their wallets were
emptied from their accounts this digital money was made visible in the pool of cryptocurrency
using cryptocurrency mixing service how did this actually happen how could the blockchain not
locate the stolen funds well let us explain it to you the blockchain surely tracks every transaction
occurring in the cryptocurrency market it is why cryptocurrency is really hard to steal money from
but there is a new innovation not really new now in the cryptocurrency market this innovation is
called tumblers or mixers or what we referred to before as cryptocurrency mixing service
so what happens is that the scammers mix up the stolen cryptocurrency money into a pool
of other people's digital money this stolen money is obviously marked and can be traced
so they do not use it instead of taking out this money they exchange it with the unmarked money
from the cryptocurrency pool this way they have bundles and bundles of digital money that are
not marked as being stolen from anyone this is how the two khaji brothers managed to steal 3.6
billion dollars despite the tight security of blockchain technology so what happened next the
afrikrypt website stopped working as their server went down within two days after the two brothers
announced the hacking of their website they vanished into thin air with 3.6 billion dollars
because the cryptocurrency market is decentralized and its transactions occur peer-to-peer
it is difficult for the government and police to track down such scammers
the police have been unable to arrest the two brothers yet after escaping from south africa
they went to the uae and then flew to the uk to settle there with their families the two
brothers denied all the allegations and said that they had not stolen any digital assets
according to the khaji brothers someone broke into and hacked their corporate website and stole the
investors funds when they announced this cyber attack publicly they received many death threats
from the investors so they had to leave the country for the sake of their family's safety
till date the investors funds have not been recovered nor have the allegations against
the two brothers been proven the attorneys for the khaji brothers reject the involvement of
two brothers in any such crime declaring that all the claims and allegations had no ground
it was just the cyber attack that hacked the corporate website that led to the scam of the
investors funds these are not the only crypto scams that ever occurred crypto scams are still
occurring these days as the number of con artists and scammers is increasing in this digital market
another big crypto scam that occurred in 2017 was the onecoin scam it is now estimated to
be the biggest ever cryptocurrency scam since the scammers ran away with 25 billion dollars
it is actually a ponzi scheme that is posing in the digital world as cryptocurrency
the founder of this fake cryptocurrency disappeared after the fraud was revealed the
other members and the leader of the company were arrested and sent to jail another famous crypto
scam that occurred in 2018 was by bit connect it was another ponzi scheme that started in 2016.
its founder stole 4 billion it was an open source cryptocurrency company bitconnect used the money
from new investors to pay its old investors it is how the company kept going for two years
until people noticed what was going on but this company was not yet ready to stop scamming people
when bit connect was about to crash zero they started another trading scheme called bit connect
x to lure new investors they could have stolen billions of more assets until the founder of
bit connect divish darjee was arrested in delhi in 2018. if you are into crypto trading consider
these previous crypto scams as lessons and try to stay away from scammers now how can you do that
by never trusting anyone with sketchy exchange pop-ups investing in a company with no history
of the founders or little recommendations for the founding exchange from the market or if people
are putting too much money into an investment and not storing it in their cold wallets these
are all the red flags that will alert you to stay away from that particular cryptocurrency exchange
do you think cryptocurrency is a trustable way of investing money or do you think it is a big
risk given all these big scams that happened let us know your opinion in the comments section below
we would be happy to know your opinion if you found this video informative and enjoyed the
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