Jay Calvert Scams

Avoiding Crypto Investment Scams: A Real Case from Canada

Avoiding Crypto Investment Scams: A Real Case from Canada

Another financial scam in more detail. This time it is a variation of the Investment scam. Cryptocurrency scams are based around cryptocurrency, a highly volatile digital currency that has gained a lot of popularity over the last 15 years. You might know it better as Bitcoin, which is just one type of cryptocurrency. Like a brand if you will, and there are many other names of cryptocurrency like Ethereum, Tether or Dogecoin.

Why Do Scammers Deal With Cryptocurrency?

What makes cryptocurrency enticing to criminals is that it is basically unlinkable to whoever owns that little string of alphanumeric characters that make up the block of data that is your money. Once the transaction is done, there is no way to find out who is behind it in order to get your money back. Once it is gone, it is typically gone for good.

Cryptocurrencies are pretty complicated in how they work without a central bank, so we won’t get into how they work here. The important thing to know about cryptocurrencies, is that they are typically unstable, and unpredictable which make them prime candidates for scamming somebody with.

We have all heard the tales of those who have made millions in cryptocurrency investments, but in honesty, these are very, very rare these days. Yes there are many cases of those who have doubled or tripled their investments, but a lot of people have taken major losses. Cryptocurrency markets are akin to playing the lottery with your savings. You probably won’t win.

Because we hear about people who have been successful in cryptocurrencies, we think that we should dip our toes into it and see what it is all about. Maybe just a small investment of $100 is a safe start…

I recently read a story where someone had seen an ad on Facebook and decided to take a little chance. They only used $100 to start with, seems like a fair gamble, and not losing too much if it does turn out to be a scam right? Well, they get a call a few weeks later saying that their investment has grown to $90,000 USD! But, in order to get the money, they say he needs to send 10% to his crypto account in order to withdraw the $90,000. It was when the person went into the bank to cash a cheque to cover the amount needed, and the person was asking how long it would take for the cheque to clear because they needed to withdraw the $9000. The teller was interested in what it was for and asked the person. The person told the teller about the 10% needed to withdraw the $90,000 and the teller knew immediately that this was a common scam and was able to convince the person to not pay them.

Canada’s Mandatory AML Training

In Canada, luckily, Anti-money laundering training is mandatory at all banks and financial institutions. At all levels of the organization, even those who are not tellers. AML (Anti-Money Laundering) training is designed to educate individuals on identifying, reporting, and preventing money laundering activities within financial institutions and other regulated businesses. It covers the basic principles of anti-financial crime, financial regulations, compliance aspects, and risk preparation.

So, luckily, this person lived in Canada and the teller was able to save him from sending more money to the scammer.

Protecting Yourself

This is just one example of Crypto scams, there are several more. Some key takeaways here;

  1. Never invest with somebody you have found online, especially through an advertisement, anybody can buy advertisements online.
  2. Cryptocurrency is not a way to get rich quick, don’t fall for the hype
  3. Nobody can guarantee a high return on cryptocurrency without any risk
  4. Remember the 4 P’s. If it is too good to be true, it probably is.

Jay Calvert Tips and Tricks

How to Avoid Identity Theft Online

Scammers are always on the lookout for a fresh victim. Readily available information that people share and post online are great starts.

It is important to learn how to protect your identity online, because what you post, and what you are sharing can easily be used against you. Scammers are always on the lookout for a fresh victim and readily available information that people share and post online are great starts. This document is going to focus on Facebook, almost all social media sites will have privacy settings that you can tailor to best protect you and your identity.

Identity Theft

Identity theft is when your image or name is stolen and used by scammers. Sometimes this could be a fake Facebook profile, or worse, they start taking out loans in your name, or even take ownership of your house. There are some real horror stories out there of innocent people losing everything because the other person has more proof of their identity than the person they stole it from!

Impersonation Scams

Impersonation scams can vary from having somebody pretend to be you on Social Media, to having somebody take out loans and mortgages using your identity. This is a very scary part of our existence now and this is becoming an all too familiar scam we hear about weekly in the news. We can limit our risks by being thoughtful about what we share online and offline that can be used against us

Choosing What We Share

Always keep important documents, like birth certificates, tax documents, legal documents, deeds etc secured. Also keep your important items like credit cards, identification and Social Insurance Numbers secure. Carry only the cards you need with you on a day to day basis, keep the others locked away. These can be reissued again to an imposter, but having the originals might help you. Never give out any important information over the phone.

A lot of us like to share our images and updates on sites like Facebook and other sites. It is only natural we want to our lives with our friends and family. Sites like Facebook are great if you are far apart from your loved ones and still want to keep in touch with them. How we have our Facebook and other sites Privacy settings configured, could be letting more than just our friends and family in on our lives, we could be handing this information over to scammers to use. Against us!

When setting up any public profile, always check the privacy settings.

Depending on when you setup your Facebook account, your privacy settings might be a little more open than you’d like. By default there are a few things you can’t hide on Facebook, and that is your profile picture and your name. Those are always public.

Choosing a Safe Profile Picture

Choose a profile picture that can’t be used against you, for example, one that cannot be used to get a new ID. Make sure it isn’t just your face, and if it is, wear sunglasses, or a hat. Ideally, show you at your best, relaxing in a chair or at the beach etc.

Time For a Privacy Checkup

First, let’s confirm that we are setup to have only our friends able to see our posts and pictures.

  1. Log in to Facebook
  2. In the top right corner, you will see your profile picture, click on it.
  3. Choose the menu option Settings & Privacy
  4. Click Privacy Check up
  5. Click Who Can See What You Share, then click Continue on the pop up
  6. For each of the items, click the arrow on the right of the item to choose what others can see.
  7. For most items, you have the choice between Public, Friends, Friends except…, Specific Friends, Only Me, and Custom. More most settings you want it to be Friends, not Public.
  8. Click Done when you have made your choice
  9. Click Next
  10. Continue through the wizard, carefully reviewing each option.

Spear Phishing

Spear Phishing is when you are specifically targeted in a phishing scam. The scammers have done their research about you, with information they have found online about you. They might know that you like to travel, like to knit or make wooden boats. They might even know that you like certain products or follow certain brands. Scammers can even discover the names of your grandchildren because your friend list is exposed to the public on Facebook. They can use this information against you very easily. They can also find out more information about your friends and relatives and impersonate them to get to you.

One of the scariest scams going around is when scammers utilize AI to be able to mimic the voice of somebody you love, see our article here about that.

Jay Calvert Scams

Beware of Facebook Quizzes: Protect Your Personal Information

The Quiz Scam is usually found on Facebook and comes with a challenge by one of your friends, or via some other group post, possibly just from one of the random feeds that Facebook serves you up to keep you on the website. They will challenge you to answer the questions, “it will be so fun, and get your friends to do it too, and pass it along by sharing it too!”

The quizzes are usually in the form of a series of questions like these;

  • Where did you grow up?
  • Favourite colour?
  • First pet’s name?
  • Street you grew up on?
  • Lucky Number?

They are all meant to gather information that you might have used to either answer security questions on an account, like your email, when you first set it up. The same questions you need to answer if you forgot your password, or, can be used to guess your password.

There are other types of quizzes, like the following –

Choose Between Two Things

You add your reaction for your choice (Elvis of course).

What Type of <Insert Object Here> Are You?

Here is what they can do with that information

  1. Use it for pure fun, possible, but not worth the risk
  2. Use it to get your reaction on a post, which they then choose later to something else – could be used to scam others down the road
  3. Get to know you better by knowing what you like and don’t like
  4. Facebook then sees, you like this type of content, and guess what, serves you up more

Protecting Yourself

Don’t react to posts like this and don’t answer any quizzes with any information that can help identify you, your security answers or used against you.