Pretend you want to do a crypto impersonation scam.

You might purloin the likeness of a known cryptocurrency expert. Especially a handsome one.

A balding Average Joe who has made a very modest name as a stock expert would seem an odd choice, but there’s a first time for everything.

(Seeing your photo misappropriated is painful. Seeing your photo misappropriated next to clunky English slogans is devastating.)

The above photo is at least one of the active groups.

But to rewind to the beginning, I was contacted on LinkedIn in late April of 2023 by someone from Canada about some groups that “I” was apparently running.

I asked this person to warn the group. Warning was attempted, but he/she (I’ll keep this person’s identifying features private) was immediately booted.

I got busy, and candidly forgot about this.

Then, on December 2nd, I was contacted by an Italian victim wondering why “I” had not been replying on Telegram after exchanging many messages before, and wondering how to access the money that he/she wired.

I asked for photos of the group, and received what I attached above.

It’s likely the scammer is in China — not just because of the awkward English, and not just because “ten years to sharpen a sword” is from the Chinese idiom of 十年磨剑 (shi nian mo jian), but also because the photo is stolen from an ad for an investing course I made for Sina, a major Chinese internet platform, in late 2019:

On December 4th, I contacted Interpol, figuring I’d try even though their website says they only take referrals from local law enforcement agencies.

On December 5th, I contacted the US FBI, both by telephone and via the www.ic3.gov cybercrimes website they referred me to (it asked for a US address of the victim, which is why I called; I was told to “put anything” for now, just to get the crime reported).

I did not contact the Chinese police, reasoning that they wouldn’t care considering that no known victims are in China.

I have not heard back from the FBI (or Interpol, though I didn’t really expect to); I’d wanted to wait in the event law enforcement opted to join the group and pose as a potential victim to build a case against the scammer, but I also feel a responsibility to balance that against the pragmatic need to publish a warning article, even if my guess is that most of the victims aren’t native English speakers.

It’s fully possible that they have a backlog of these crimes to tackle, and that six-figure scams take a back seat to seven-figure and eight-figure ones.

Anyway, I contacted Telegram on December 16th (no reply so far, though it hasn’t been long). But there’s no-man’s-land element to this.

I’m an American. The scammer is likely in China. Victims in Canada and Italy. The Telegram platform is based in the United Arab Emirates.

Who “owns” this crime?

I’m presuming that there are many cross-border crypto crimes these days, and that scammers are aware of not only the sorts of difficulties I’m having reporting this one, but also the difficulties in collecting evidence and adjudicating and enforcing any judgments across international boundaries with varying or nonexistent extradition treaties.

I’ll let you know what, if any, resolution comes of this.

If anyone has suggestions, please drop me a line.

Most of all, stay safe.

James

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