Bitcoin and Crypto Scams in New Zealand

The cryptocurrency ecosystem is rife with scams, fraud and misleading schemes. This guide explores the Bitcoin and other crypto scams posing a risk to New Zealanders, how to identify and avoid them and report them to authorities.

Updated 11 June 2021

Summary:

Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies are a novelty; they’ve been around for such a short time and introduce completely new concepts, such as cryptography, blockchain technology and an entirely unregulated economy.
With such an alien baseline, it’s understandable how so many people are duped in the digital asset world.
The world of cryptocurrencies is plagued with scams. Exercise extreme caution at all times.
Since banks can refuse service to high-risk clients and query any suspicious transaction, criminals favour decentralised cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, because they can’t be sanctioned, blocked or reversed.
Con artists rely on the novelty of cryptocurrencies and the naivety most people have towards digital assets.
Any financial fraud and scams that existed before Bitcoin have evolved to take advantage of the new technology. This includes lotteries, Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, phishing and much more.
New Zealand takes internet crime and fraud seriously and there are multiple avenues to report crimes and suspicious behaviour.

Our guide covers:

Common Cryptocurrency Scams

Sadly, fraud and deception exist in every aspect of daily life, especially in the financial services sector. When Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies came to light, scammers saw an opportunity to manipulate unsuspecting newcomers in an unregulated market. Most cryptocurrency scams have evolved from traditional scams, such as phishing, Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, and various schemes to lure people into parting with their cash.

Besides devising scams targeting the cryptocurrency communities, criminals favour Bitcoin for the remuneration of their crimes. For example, blackmailers and con artists entice their targets to pay in digital assets outside the scope of the regulated financial system, notably banks and e-wallets. Common scams include:

Giveaway Scams

One of the most obvious cryptocurrency scams is known as the giveaway scam. How this works is simple. A scammer publishes a Bitcoin or Ethereum address and offers anyone who sends BTC or ETH to the address will get double, triple or any other multiple in return.

It might sound ridiculous that anyone would fall for that. However, confidence is built by impersonating well-known personalities, such as Elon Musk, Changpeng Zhao, Justin Sun or Vitalik Buterin, on Twitter and other social media platforms and forums. Then, bots generate hundreds of comments claiming to have earned from the scheme. Pressure to act quickly is added by limiting the amount being given away.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has said that Elon Musk impersonators have raked in more than US$2 million between October 2020 and March 2021.

On the 15th of July 2020, a sophisticated attack on Twitter allowed hackers to compromise the platform through an administrative panel allowing the hackers to change account settings and ultimately passwords of accounts belonging to high profile celebrities and public figures such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Apple and Uber. The hackers posted messages offered to double any Bitcoin that was sent to the provided address. In this incident, it was the real accounts belonging to these celebrities posting these messages, rather than impersonators.

The idea of receiving free cryptocurrencies isn’t totally absurd. For example, it’s common for new cryptocurrencies to conduct a practice known as airdrops. An airdrop is a marketing technique for new coins or projects to get attention and build a community with a stake in the project’s success. However, airdrops do not require payment to participate.

Phishing Scams

Phishing scams have been around since the dawn of the internet in the ‘90s. A phishing scheme aims to trick a victim into revealing sensitive information about themselves, such as usernames, email addresses, and passwords which the orchestrators can use to compromise someone’s bank accounts, or in the case of a crypto phishing scam, compromise their wallet or exchange account.

Phishing attacks aim to trick people into visiting a lookalike website or login screen to input their credentials to access their account when behind the scenes, the attacker is stealing the information for later use.

Whenever you visit a cryptocurrency website, make sure the web domain you’re visiting is correct. It’s common for scammers to buy similar looking or sounding websites to take advantage of common typos and use different top-level domains to arbitrage traffic from popular exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.

Some examples include (DO NOT VISIT THESE SITES):

wwwbinance(dot)com - this domain targets anyone who forgets to add the dot after www
wwwlbinance(dot)com - this domain targets anyone who accidentally hits the letter L instead of the dot after typing www
binance(dot)hk - this domain targets anyone typing the Hong Kong top-level domain when trying to visit the Binance website

Other techniques for getting visitors to phishing websites is through emails. Scammers can buy email lists from the black market speculating that some of the addresses belong to users of a particular crypto exchange or wallet. The email is designed to look like it originated from the exchange but aims to direct the user to a phishing site. The best way to reduce the risk of phishing scams is to always enable multi-factor authentication on any crypto exchange or wallet account. Using 2FA prevents perpetrators from accessing your account even if they compromise your username and password.

Cloned or Fake Exchanges and Wallets

Similar to phishing scams, which imitate established brands to steal your credentials to access your account and withdraw your funds, a cloned or fake exchange or wallet aims to deceive you into depositing crypto for a service that doesn’t exist.

A fake exchange may go as far as having a functional trading interface, albeit a primitive one. The idea is to look as legitimate as possible and acquire customers who deposit cryptocurrencies to begin trading.

Regulators, such as the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority, UK Financial Conduct Authority, US Securities Exchange Commission and others regularly publish warnings and alerts about cloned exchanges and cryptocurrency trading platforms.

Ponzi Schemes

A Ponzi scheme is a classic scam that is marketed as a hedge fund or similar investment product. In the past decade, the classic Ponzi scheme has been applied to cryptocurrency-related investment products. A Ponzi scheme will claim high probability, perhaps even guarantee, high returns. A Ponzi scheme relies on new money coming in to pay out older investors, or more appropriately, victims, and typically relies on network marketing to grow the number of new investors. People at the top typically get paid out and feel compelled to introduce the scheme to family, friends and colleagues, and so on. Eventually, the economics of the scheme cause it to self-destruct.

The characteristics of a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme are no different to any other. Simply the operator is targeting a different victim profile or relying on the naivety people have towards Bitcoin. Red flags to be aware of include:

High investment returns promising minimal or even zero risks are dubious because no investment is risk-free. However, countless anecdotes and mainstream news coverage convey endless success stories of people who made life-changing sums from Bitcoin, which lowers people’s guard to audacious claims.
Overly consistent returns are suspicious because all markets go through ups and downs. The cryptocurrency market experiences extreme volatility, and it’s one of the toughest markets to be consistently profitable.
There is difficulty receiving payouts, and the operator encourages participants to keep money in the scheme.
Many Ponzi schemes are unlicensed and unregulated because scrutiny from authorities will soon reveal the crime. However, the decentralised finance ecosystem is largely unregulated.

Pump and Dump Scams

A pump and dump is nothing new. Traders have been colluding to pump up the price of stocks and other securities for centuries. A pump and dump scheme involves the perpetrators buying up an asset cheaply, pumping the price through a campaign, typically by praising the investment as undervalued and a once in a lifetime opportunity. The objective is to encourage speculators to also invest in the asset, thus creating demand and push up the price. Eventually, the pump and dump coordinators sell their assets at the peak for a massive profit and generally, their large sale causes concern amongst traders who also begin selling.

Pump and dumps are considered fraud in regulated markets, such as stock exchanges. However, cryptocurrencies are not regulated, nor are the exchanges where they’re traded. As a result, there are many pump and dump communities on WhatsApp and Telegram where groups organise pump and dumps schemes together and start shilling to drive wider interest in other communities.

Pump and dumps aim for low value and volume coins, such as Dogecoin, which at the start of 2021 was worth less than a cent and peaked at just over one dollar before a dump occurred. These schemes depend on later investors buying at higher and higher prices, and they are ultimately the ones holding worthless tokens once the scheme has played out.

ICO Scams

In 2017 and 2018, there was a wave of Initial Coin Offerings, also known as ICOs. In 2017, 966 ICOs raised NZ$9 billion, and in 2018, 2,284 ICOs raised NZ$17.5 billion.

An ICO mimics an Initial Public Offering in the decentralised finance economy. ICOs are a scheme to raise funds for developing a project, company or solution, in exchange for a digital token which investors expect to appreciate once the project launches and begins operating. ICO operators publish a whitepaper which is essentially a prospectus outlining how they intend to spend the raised funds and the project roadmap.

However, an ICO is completely unregulated, and anyone can use an ICO as a platform to raise money. Without regulatory oversight and thorough due diligence on the founders, questionable business models can get funding through ICOs. Unfortunately, despite numerous success stories, the overwhelming majority of ICOs were destined for failure, and many turned out to be outright scams.

SellMyGood Coin was a New Zealand example which was suggested to be a scam by journalists and the Financial Markets Authority. It was closed down before going live.

Investing in ICOs is one of the riskiest things you can do with your money, and although there is a potential to enjoy huge returns, it’s far more likely you’ll not just lose your money, but it will end up in the hands of criminals. For example, a tool called Dead Coins maintains a database of 2,067 cryptocurrencies abandoned for various reasons.

Asset Recovery Scams

Asset recovery scams are the final nail in the coffin. The premise of an asset recovery scam is a consultant, usually professing to have cybersecurity or private investigation expertise, and offering victims of a scam the opportunity to recover their stolen funds with their help.

Victims of financial fraud, especially when cryptocurrencies are involved, rarely get their money recovered by authorities. In addition, investigating these types of crimes is difficult as perpetrators go to great lengths to conceal their identity, and often the criminals fall outside of your local law enforcement agency's jurisdiction.

Victims cling to the idea of recovering their stolen money and agree to cooperate with the asset recovery company. These companies require a pre-payment or deposit, usually a few thousand dollars, which is often negligible for someone hoping to recover tens of thousands of dollars. The scam here is that no services will be provided, and the operator walks off with the deposit. Often, scammers use this scheme to target their previous victims.

How to Report Bitcoin scams in New Zealand

If you’ve been targeted or affected by a cryptocurrency scam, you should report it to local authorities. Unfortunately, because cryptocurrency isn’t regulated and scams come in various formats, there isn’t one authority responsible for managing and investigating complaints.

You can submit complaints to the following authorities:

Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)
Netsafe
Financial Markets Authority (FMA)
New Zealand Police
Consumer Protection (part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment)
Department of Internal Affairs

Computer Emergency Response Team New Zealand (CERTNZ)
In New Zealand, CERTNZ is responsible for supporting businesses, organisations and individuals affected by or vulnerable to cybersecurity incidents. CERT tracks the cybersecurity threat landscape in New Zealand and publishes quarterly reports. If you think you’ve been approached by a scammer or someone has been trying to solicit suspicious services to you, you can report an issue to CERT by completing an online form.

Netsafe
Netsafe is an independent, non-profit online safety organisation founded in 1998 to help New Zealander use the internet safely. Netsafe concerns itself with promoting safe use of the internet and online services, looking specifically at scams, bullying, abuse, privacy, viruses and misinformation. You can report online incidents to Netsafe via an online form, meaning you don’t need to wait for a crime to occur before reporting. If your instincts tell you something doesn’t look right, you can report it to Netsafe.

Financial Markets Authority (FMA)
The Financial Markets Authority is responsible for regulating the financial markets in New Zealand. Although Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies aren’t directly regulated, they overlap regulated instruments. For example, Bitcoin can be traded as a contract for difference or futures contract, and exchanges use regulated payment methods to exchange against New Zealand dollars. In addition, the FMA hosts a list of companies that investors should avoid helping residents avoid potential scams. The FMA welcomes complaints from the community.

New Zealand Police
Like any other crime, you can report a cybercrime to the New Zealand Police. The New Zealand Police offers advice concerning internet crime and cybercrime and recommends reporting crime the same way you report any other crime to the Police. Notably, remember that 111 is only for emergencies when immediate response is required, and 105 is the non-emergency number.

How to Avoid Bitcoin Scams - What to Know:

The best way to avoid Bitcoin scams is to exercise extreme caution and make sure you thoroughly understand the products and services you’re using. Here are a few helpful tips to avoid scams:

1. Check URLs and websites carefully.

Does the URL look correct, and are there any spelling mistakes?
Do you connect to the website securely via Transport Layer Security (TLS), formerly, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)? The address bar will show HTTPS rather than HTTP).
Does the website have a valid certificate? Click the padlock in the far left of the browser address bar to see for whom the certificate was issued.
Does the website have spelling mistakes or other signs of lack of professionalism?
Did you visit this website directly, click a referral link from a third-party site, is the link from an email or find it through search engine results?

2. How a product is being sold can be a red flag.

Is someone you have never met trying to sell or encourage you to use a service?
Are aggressive sales tactics being used to pressure you to deposit funds?
Are you being promised insanely high returns and guaranteed no risk or loss?
Does your success depend on introducing new people to join the project?

3. Research before trusting a company or investment.

Does the company have any positive or negative reviews, and do the positive reviews look authentic? A red flag will be if all reviews have been written within a short space of time.
Are the company’s founders public, and do their LinkedIn and other social media profiles look authentic? Do a google image search of the founders’ profile picture to see if it’s used elsewhere.
Check reviews from reputable blogs and news websites. It’s very easy to set up a website and write glowing reviews or pay smaller blogs to publish sponsored content.

Next Steps: Educate yourself on cryptocurrencies before going anywhere near. You can read dozens of helpful guides on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on MoneyHub: