Crypto scammers steal more than $200,000 from Bruce County residents

$200,000 in crypto losses: OPP In the past four months crypto currency scammers have wreaked havoc in southern Bruce County, CTV London's Scott Miller reports.

In the past four months crypto currency scammers have stolen more than $200,000 from residents in southern Bruce County. Whether it’s unsolicited malware offering tech support for crypto payments, or people being duped by fraudulent online crypto companies, digital currency scammers are raking it in from Bruce County residents.

“We're also seeing the employment scams where people are offering work from home type of online employment, and they need to work with them with cryptocurrency instead of traditional funds, and that employment never actually comes to fruition,” said South Bruce OPP Constable, Matthew Thorpe.

It’s unclear why so many people in Southern Bruce County are being targeted, but crypto-currency based scams cost Canadians more than $309 million in 2023.

“What's happening is these victims are going online and they're dealing directly with the scammers that are teaching them how to open a crypto wallet, how to transfer their crypto, and then they are shown on these platforms how big their investment gets, when actually it's fake,” said OPP Anti-Rackets Branch member, Detective Constable Joel Armit.

The OPP just launched Project Atlas to inform the public about the rise in cryptocurrency scams, and how best to protect themselves. However, for hundreds of Canadians it’s already too late.

“My dad actually got scammed in a bitcoin that people were talking up, hyping it up. He put all this money in a virtual wallet and then it disappears, all the money's gone, can't find it, can't get back into it, and I think it was a good like 5 to 8 grand, something like that,” said Braeden Keenan, of Ottawa.

Cst. Thorpe said that while the scamming methods like computer pop-ups offering tech support, or posing as grandkids in trouble are the same, the payment method using cryptocurrency does make the fraudulent payments harder for police to track, which is exactly why the criminals are doing it.

“Just exercise extreme caution. There are legitimate investment firms in relation to cryptocurrency, but as I've discovered myself, there's also many illegitimate ones. So, you can contact the Better Business Bureau, or Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre to get some guidance on this, or just run a few Google searches,” said Thorpe.

You can learn how to protect yourself at Ontario Provincial Police - Project ATLAS