Bitcoin fraud in Ireland targeting high net worth individuals

Gardaí believe high-net-worth people have been encouraged into investing millions in Bitcoin by people who are now suspected of taking control of their cryptocurrency accounts, or “wallets” as the accounts are known.

The Irish Times understands that at least one bank became concerned when an older customer made moves to transfer large sums of money, believed to be in the region of €500,000 per transaction, from an account that had not been accessed for years.

Read that this morning. Would love a bit more detail. Was it a regulated firm?

Of course not, our regulated firms adhere to the highest ethical standards, guided by the utmost Ϝitness and probity. They'd only introduce clients to bitcoin when they need to offload their own personal holdings at a premium.

Any new innovation represents an opportunity for scammers to exploit a lack of understanding from the general public. There is NO circumstance in which it would be normal to provide someone with the private key to your bitcoin wallet. The moment that anyone does that - they will be relieved of their bitcoin within a couple of minutes. Anyone who ever asks you for that private key is a scammer.

It would be a bit like handing someone a hold-all with all your savings in cash and asking then to "Mind that would you please? I have to visit the toilet"

It is important to keep things in perspective

"Many such promised investments are based on the purchase of shares, bonds, cryptocurrencies and rare metals, as well as the putting of funds into overseas land and alternative energy projects."

But hey, if it mentions crypto, splash the headline with bitcoin.

WolfeTone said:

It is important to keep things in perspective

"Many such promised investments are based on the purchase of shares, bonds, cryptocurrencies and rare metals, as well as the putting of funds into overseas land and alternative energy projects."

But hey, if it mentions crypto, splash the headline with bitcoin.

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I am guessing that this is because the story is about someone 'investing'/robbed of hundreds of thousands of euro on bitcoin...Just guessing though.

I am sure if he had being defrauded into investing into low yield, Government bonds, the headline wouldn't have mentioned Crypto.

I understand the desire to defend bitcoin but nobody was blaming bitcoin. It was fraud that involved bitcoin. Maybe a little less sensitivity on the subject...

Sunny said:

I understand the desire to defend bitcoin but nobody was blaming bitcoin. It was fraud that involved bitcoin. Maybe a little less sensitivity on the subject...

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I understand, I suppose it is just about it is how the article is interpreted. I don't particular want to go down the rabbit hole of deciphering each sentence but the article has the sense of a pump-and-dump newspaper filler than anything else.

How many high-net worth individuals are being 'groomed' these days to part with their earnings? And why now, if it is a thing of significance then surely grooming high-net worth individuals did not become a thing with the advent of crypto? Surely it is happening all the time?

The article is very sketchy on where the proposed €500,000 transfer was headed for. It could have been bitcoin, or shares, bonds, metals, overseas property.
Only later in the article is there reference to other victims who "then encouraged to buy very significant amounts of Bitcoin", which in todays parlance could mean they bought 0.1 of a bitcoin when it was €3,000 (or €300 worth) and that 0.1 is now worth a significant €6,000.

Im not saying there isnt fraud, or attempted fraud, but the article is very watery in detail and smacks more that the headline uses bitcoin for click-bait more than anything.
That is just my opinion, I could of course be wrong.

There are plenty of stories about romance scams and phishing. They serve to warn people what to look out for.

It is important to highlight that seriously rich older people are being scammed with Bitcoin as the hook.

It alerts others who have heard about Bitcoin to be on the lookout for being defrauded by it.

Brendan

Brendan Burgess said:

It is important to highlight that seriously rich older people are being scammed with Bitcoin as the hook.

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True, but I would suggest it is on the fringes of all the scams, next to near non-existent. Lots of younger people have trouble getting their heads around bitcoin. Why spend time with older people on a confusing topic like bitcoin, when you could try scam them in so many other ways with things that are familiar to them - like bonds, perhaps?

It always confuses me a bit, that high net worth individuals who I assume are broadly intelligent people, cannot get sound trusted financial advice on such matters. Instead they are "groomed" by people "some of whom are foreign nationals"....the Nigerian Prince has an insatiable appetite!

Brendan Burgess said:

It alerts others who have heard about Bitcoin to be on the lookout for being defrauded by it.

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You cant be defrauded by bitcoin Brendan, it is why it is worth so much today. You can be defrauded by people, organisations, governments, stock brokers, banks, central banks, but you cannot be defrauded by bitcoin.

I have not heard of many people claiming you can get rich quick through bonds.

Scammers tend to target people who think that they can make easy money and quick profits.

And people with this tendency will find speculating in Bitcoin attractive.

Brendan

Brendan Burgess said:

I have not heard of many people claiming you can get rich quick through bonds.

Scammers tend to target people who think that they can make easy money and quick profits.

And people with this tendency will find speculating in Bitcoin attractive.

Brendan

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So we're talking about out and out scammers who are building a narrative around bitcoin in constructing their scam as it's still new to a lot of people, they don't understand it and don't understand what they're doing when they're asked to relay their bitcoin private key. When that no longer works, they'll devise a scam around something else.

All of that to say, scammers defraud. Bitcoin - as a transparent protocol - doesn't.

tecate said:

So we're talking about out and out scammers who are building a narrative around bitcoin in constructing their scam as it's still new to a lot of people, they don't understand it and don't understand what they're doing when they're asked to relay their bitcoin private key. When that no longer works, they'll devise a scam around something else.

All of that to say, scammers defraud. Bitcoin - as a transparent protocol - doesn't.

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That is certainly the case for Bitcoin, however there are a number of cryptocurrencies that are built from the ground up to scam people out of their money. I'm aware of one in particular operating in Ireland that supposedly links the cryptocurrency to gold and some other techno nonsense, but is ultimately a pyramid scheme. The nuance of Bitcoin vs any other cryptocurrency is unclear to most and certainly unclear to the people falling for these scams.

Zenith63 said:

The nuance of Bitcoin vs any other cryptocurrency is unclear to most and certainly unclear to the people falling for these scams.

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That's precisely the point. Once that knowledge gap gets filled, then the scammers move on to the same thing but with yet another different dressing (it won't be bitcoin or crypto next time, it will be something else people don't fully understand at that point in time). We;re not informing anyone correctly if we suggest that someone can be 'defrauded by bitcoin' as that's completely inaccurate.

The same goes for other cryptocurrency projects. If you want to out a known scam, then provide the specific detail.

Brendan Burgess said:

Scammers tend to target people who think that they can make easy money and quick profits.

And people with this tendency will find speculating in Bitcoin attractive.

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And I don't think, that people who have obtained high net worth are the type of people who tend to plump for get-rich-quick schemes, broadly speaking.

These scammers are completely wasting their time targeting older out of their bitcoin, or money for bitcoin. The wrong demographic altogether.