Dark Side of Bitcoin

Human kind has explored and conquered almost every meter of this planet and we witnessed the expansion of humanity, science, literacy, music and so many elements of our daily life that we almost exhausted the frontiers of exploration.

Needless to say, that humanity is turning toward space and it looks like a natural path of human kind to reach other planets. Once again we become pioneers in conquering wasteness of space.

However, with the exploration of our planet we are witnessing how parallelly crime, scams and fraud are expanding their horizons.

One of those explorations literally boomed during lockdowns, mainly because we had a new phenomena and that is “working from home” where we literally made the Earth flat.

Flat in terms that we are all connected by the internet, from point A to point B via a direct line.

Working from home has forced us to communicate with loved ones, peers, friends via boxes; our mobile phone, our computer screen and it was expected that this phenomenon working from home will be exploited by fraudsters. They use this direct line to communicate, offering either love, romance, salvation, cure and most importantly the thirst for human addiction of being secure. Secure by getting rich.

So what the fraudsters realised is that uncertainity, fear or loss of income or job and isolation are drivers which can be explored (don’t forget fraudsters are quiet imaginative) and that moment created a perfect exploration ground for fraudsters.

That perfect exploration or hunting ground for fraudsters is our limitation to complete due diligence on the person on the other side of the internet line.

In recent months I witnessed so many calls and attended so many meetings with people who have fallen into this trap of being rich. That trap is called Bitcoin, and after all numbers don’t lie. You can invest amounts of money for a return of almost 130 %. Who would refuse, right?

The danger of dealing with someone overseas who represents a Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency company and offers you lucrative earnings for which no one knows, not including the tax man. This is something you need to sit and think about it.

If something is too good to be true, often it is and you should be suspicious, that is quite important when it comes to Bitcoin.

According to ACCC, there 10,412 reports about cryptocurrency scams in 2021, with losses of about $129 million for the year 2021.

Those figures are tremendously high, particularly when we are talking about people life savings, people who borrowed money from regular banks, friends, loved ones or sold homes just to invest money.

How to get money back if you are victim of scam?

I like to point out that even if you consider investigating a bitcoin scam, most likely you will never get your money back or bring to justice the person who did it this to you for one simple reason. In the digital age and lockdowns, fraudsters have already created vast elaborate networks of deception, hiding their true identity and the list goes on.

In case you identify the fraudster and take them to court, as well, the question is if you will get your money back.

How to prevent being a victim of fraud?

The first line of detection, protection and response is the firewall, the Human Firewall.

In today’s commercial and political environment, correctly using intelligence methods is vital to making plans; and predicting, understanding, and isolating threats, especially under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understandably, a vast amount of money is poured into the IT sector in order to safeguard intellectual property, however, corporations quiet often disregard or oversee the human factor.

We focus on digital threats, and become ignorant to this human factor.

The COVID-19 crisis transformed the workplace into “working from home” spaces, virtually overnight.

This represents one of the weakest links for any organisation’s information and cyber security.

For many businesses, working from home has opened a new frontier for the loss of data and classified information, as well as workplace injuries, fraud and economic espionage.

That being said, you are your own human firewall and you should question everything like Socrates did. Most importantly you need to deal with institutions, organisations and financial outlets you know like banks, insurance companies who have real people, real call centres, regulated by government Regulations, Acts etc.

The most important piece of advice is don’t deal online with anyone regarding your life savings, pension and future, it is not worth it.

After all fraudsters educate themselves with information and literature we all using online. They are skilled in deception, falsification and avoiding you once you transfer money to them.

This post was written by Mario Bekes