Bitcoin Scams Steal $11 Million

Saturday, January 31, 2015 - 12:40 in Mathematics & Economics

Bitcoin is the digital world's most popular "virtual currency", with millions in circulation. Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in these virtual deposits from customers over the past four years, according to new cyber-security research from Southern Methodist University. In the first empirical study of its kind, the authors found that four different types of schemes using authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets lured customers so deposits could be stolen. As with real money, Bitcoin people were duped with the promise of "get rich quick" schemes, coupled with the inability to judge the legitimacy of web services to decide which financial sites are good or bad. read more

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