Can I get my money back from virtual currency fraud?

1. What is a virtual currency scam?

(1) What is virtual currency fraud?

Virtual currency fraud and general financial fraud are both property crimes. The only difference is that the property defrauded may be in the form of cryptocurrency. It may be that you buy fake cryptocurrency, or the fraud group uses tricks to steal the cryptocurrency you hold. Currency scammed. However, because cryptocurrency is based on blockchain technology and does not operate through traditional financial institutions, once defrauded, recovery is extremely difficult. In particular, cryptocurrencies can take advantage of weak supervision to be quickly transferred abroad. Even professionals in this field are mostly at a loss as to how to recover assets.

(2) How do virtual currency scams deceive people?

The beginning of a scam is usually when the fraud group proactively contacts the victim through various channels on the Internet, and establishes a trusting relationship with the victim through text, photos, voice and even video. In fact, it is relatively difficult to detect fraud at this stage. After all, to the victim at this stage, the fraud group looks like an ordinary friend. The criminals will use personality settings such as humor and thoughtfulness to reduce the victim's defensive mentality.

Once trust is established, scammers will naturally turn to investment-related topics by sharing their successful investment experiences or specialized knowledge of virtual currencies. After the victim's interest is aroused, the scammer will deceive the victim through various means. and defraud money. Scammers take advantage of their victims' psychology. If the victim does make a profit and successfully withdraws money in the initial attempt, he will deepen his trust because he has actually gained wealth, think it is profitable, and invest more money.

At this stage, the scammer may encourage the victim to take out a loan or borrow money from relatives and friends. By manipulating the victim's desire to make money, the scammer will put the victim into serious debt. In the end, when the victim has invested a large amount of money and wants to withdraw the funds, the fraud group will delay or prevent the withdrawal for various reasons, and may require the victim to pay more fees (such as increasing the VIP name, etc.) to If the money is withdrawn smoothly, the victim may invest money again because he is worried about losing all his money, and the fraud group will achieve its purpose of fraud.

2. I encountered a virtual currency scam! what to do? Can I get the money back?

(1) If you encounter a virtual currency fraud, can you still get your money back?

If you conduct one-on-one transactions on a regular trading platform and encounter fraud, you can immediately ask the exchange customer service and describe your situation in detail, and go to the police station as soon as possible to request the freezing of the other party's cryptocurrency wallet or Taiwan's Bank account. However, if you are defrauded on an irregular or counterfeit trading platform, it will be quite difficult to identify the scammer unless he uses a bank account in Taiwan to withdraw funds. What needs to be known is that once the fraud group converts the illegal gains into virtual currency and operates it, if the cryptocurrency wallet from which the payment is received cannot be immediately blocked, the possibility of recovering the defrauded money is actually quite low. Even if there have been instances of successful fund recovery in the past, these were usually cases limited to domestic transactions. Once the funds are flown out of the country, the difficulty of recovery will increase significantly.

(2) How do I file a lawsuit if I accidentally fall into a virtual currency scam?

If you unfortunately encounter a virtual currency fraud, you can also try to seek justice through legal channels. The legal process after encountering virtual currency is as follows:

Stop fund transfers: After confirming that you have been scammed, you should immediately stop money transfers and should not misbelieve the fraud group's words to prevent further property losses.

Search for evidence: Keep all fraud-related information contact records between the two parties and proof of money transactions (such as remittance receipts, transfer details, receipts for purchasing points, etc.). It is recommended that relevant documents should be accompanied by time records as much as possible.

Call the police: Go to the police station where the crime occurred to formally report the crime. It should be noted that the 165 fraud prevention hotline mainly provides fraud consultation, but does not accept formal reports, so you must still go to the police station in person.

Cooperate with case investigation: If the procuratorate successfully locates relevant personnel of the fraud group, the reporter may receive a court summons and need to appear in court to testify. You should bring a valid ID and court summons when you appear in court, and state the facts truthfully.

Fund recovery: After the police successfully block the other party's account and confirm that it contains the defrauded funds, the victim can go to the branch where the bank account belongs to recover the funds with the crime report certificate, remittance certificate, ID card and seal, etc.

3. Is the stock trading teacher group real or fake? New virtual currency fraud method!

(1) Are there fake virtual currency exchanges?

In fact, in many fraud cases, scammers will impersonate these well-known and common virtual currency trading platforms and provide fake websites that look similar to legitimate trading platforms from the color scheme of the user interface to the overall appearance. These websites mislead victims. The scammer thought he was operating a genuine platform, but in fact he was transferring funds to the scammer's account.

The fraud organization will provide a website address of a cryptocurrency platform, which will be accompanied by various seemingly legitimate online teachings and comments, etc., to reduce the victim's defensive psychology. However, the URL actually points to a fake website set up by the scammers themselves. These fake websites will deliberately use URLs and interface designs similar to those of well-known trading platforms to mislead victims into thinking they are legitimate platforms. Well-known exchanges that are commonly counterfeited include Binance, MAX, BitoPro, etc.

(2) A rare investment opportunity with stable and high returns? Is it so healthy?

The fraud group will recommend to the victim investment opportunities that are said to be rare and have high return potential. If the victim does not find the relevant information when searching for information on the Internet and asks, the fraud group will claim that the project has just started, so the opportunity is rare. Has lots of profit potential. These so-called investment opportunities often appear in many forms, such as mobile phone mining solutions, high-paying trading robots, and yet-to-be-publicly-released cryptocurrencies. Just imagine, if there is such a highly profitable investment opportunity, sharing it with netizens or even strangers who have not known each other for a long time is equivalent to handing over the profits to others, which is too unhuman.

(3) The stock trading teacher group, is it real or fake?

Have you ever received text messages in text messages or communication software from people claiming to be "Ms. Kaijilin", "Ms. Yuanta Chen", etc. and attaching LINE IDs? Or are you directly added to the so-called "Breaking Stock Teacher Group" on the messaging software, claiming that you can achieve high-return investments by following the teacher's instructions?

In fact, such text messages or groups are usually the work of fraud groups, which usually use investment experts, institutions, quantitative trading, robot trading or professional analysts as selling points, and promise unreasonably high returns, such as daily 1% or 10% per month, etc., mislead people into believing that "low risk, high return" investment can be easily achieved. In this type of group, in addition to the criminal mastermind himself, most of the other members in the group are actually fake accounts, used to increase the chance of victims being misled into believing the scam.

(4) If the virtual currency platform is real, will it not be deceived?

The previous article described the methods used by fake trading platforms to commit fraud. You may think that as long as you pay attention to the authenticity of the trading platform, as long as it is a legitimate trading platform, you will not encounter fraud? In fact, even if it is a legitimate trading platform, fraud groups still have ways to commit fraud.

The fraud group will guide the target to use recognized safe cryptocurrency hot wallets, such as MetaMask, etc., and make the victim lower their vigilance because of the legitimacy of the platform. In the process of operating these wallet tools, the fraud group may require the victim to transfer funds to the fraud group's wallet for authentication, use the name of identity verification to make the victim reveal the password of the cryptocurrency wallet, or guide the victim to connect the wallet to a counterfeit trading platform to steal funds. , fraud groups may use the above methods to defraud victims of funds. In fact, the methods of virtual currency fraud on legitimate platforms are similar to the popular ATM fraud: although the ATM or cryptocurrency wallet itself is a legitimate platform, the fraud group uses the legitimate platform to induce the victim to commit fraud.

Therefore, no matter what the situation, you should avoid operating any financial instruments according to the instructions of unknown persons, whether they are friends or other close people, or even claiming to be employees of exchanges, etc., you need to remain vigilant.

4. How to avoid virtual currency scams? Please keep your eyes open for these points!

What are the traps of virtual currency?

(1) Head account and money laundering trap

Even if you have not invested or traded in cryptocurrency, if you register an account on a fake virtual currency trading platform and provide personal information, it may become a head account used by the fraud group to launder money. Once an account is listed as a strike account, subsequent problems will be troublesome.

Criminal groups may provide seemingly simple part-time opportunities through strange messages on messaging software, job advertisements, and legitimate labor banks to mislead the public and generate interest. They may use tax issues, account malfunctions, etc. as an excuse to ask you to provide an account or make a virtual currency transfer and promise remuneration. These criminal proceeds will be transferred directly to your cryptocurrency wallet, so your act of assisting in the transfer is actually assisting money laundering, which may violate Taiwan's Money Laundering Prevention Law and criminal law fraud.

Therefore, whether it is virtual currency or New Taiwan Dollar, as long as it involves finances, never mistrust strangers' words to transfer money or provide personal account information at will to avoid legal liability.

(2) Lottery traps on websites and text messages

In emails, social media or website pop-up pages, you may receive scam messages offering cryptocurrency prizes, such as "Congratulations on being the 10,000th person to enter the website! You have won 10 Bitcoins!", "Limited time Get it for free" etc. The victim may think that he can get a reward. Once he clicks on the link in the message and provides authorization, the fraud group's smart contract may be triggered and all the assets in the victim's wallet will be directly transferred to the fraud group's wallet.

(3) How to avoid virtual currency fraud

To avoid virtual currency scams, it is recommended to pay attention to the following things before conducting money operations to avoid money losses:

Identity of the introducer: Whether it is a well-known Internet celebrity, a strange netizen, or even a friend who has not been in touch for a long time, there is a risk of fraud, and there may even be the possibility of counterfeiting the social account of the Internet celebrity.

Professional evaluation tools: Use credible databases (such as CoinMarketCap) to confirm the investment project and its market value.

Withdrawal situation: If you need to pay additional fees or taxes to get back your investment, or if you need to deposit money again, the chance of fraud will be much higher.

Rate of return: An unreasonably high rate of return may also be a fraud. Remember not to be blinded by benefits.

Website verification: Confirm whether the website can be found through Google search and compare whether the URL matches.

Technical Team: Legitimate projects usually have a clear, named development team.

Account settings: Normal trading platforms will have a hierarchical membership system. The lowest level usually does not require bank account information, and only needs to set an account password. It is usually necessary to complete the real-name authentication process before users are asked to provide an account for fund movement.

Even if the above conditions are met, there is no guarantee that the investment is absolutely safe. Because current virtual currency transactions fall into a legal gray area, there is a lack of a complete regulatory mechanism. Therefore, before investing in virtual currencies, you must fully understand the associated risks. In the event of an unexpected fraud, unless you detect it as early as possible and take protective measures, it will be difficult to recover the losses even through government or legal channels. Therefore, investors should carefully assess investment risks before conducting capital operations.

5. Current legal regulations on virtual currencies

(1) Virtual currency crimes in current criminal law

The government has established corresponding legal regulations for virtual currencies. If a company issues virtual currency to raise funds without authorization, its behavior may be regarded as an ICO (initial coin offering) and may violate the provisions of Article 6 of the Securities and Exchange Act. Once the court determines that the virtual currency issued by the company is an unregistered securities, the Securities and Exchange Act will apply, and the person may be sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of NT$15 million.

In addition, if an operator who does not hold a valid business license engages in activities such as accepting investment funds or paying interest, it may violate the crime of illegally attracting money under Article 29-1 of the Banking Law. According to Article 125 of the Banking Act, this crime is punishable by up to ten years in prison and may be subject to a fine of NT$10 million to NT$200 million, if the property or property benefits obtained exceed NT$100 million. , the penalty will be increased to a minimum of seven years in prison, and a possible fine of NT$25 million to NT$500 million.

Finally, if the crime is suspected, even if the offender has completed his sentence, the victim still has the right to file an independent civil lawsuit for compensation. In addition, the victim may also choose to file a civil lawsuit during the criminal prosecution stage to save the cost of additional civil lawsuits.

(2) Amendment to the Virtual Currency Fraud and Money Laundering Prevention Law

According to the latest money laundering prevention law that was implemented in June 2012, the targets of punishment and the identification of criminal liability have changed. According to the new amendments to Article 15-2 of the Money Laundering Prevention Act, if an individual authorizes a third party to use his or her financial account, and the act does not comply with general business or financial transaction practices or is based on a relationship of trust between relatives and friends, and there is no other lawful reason, then He may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, short-term detention, or a fine not exceeding NT$1 million.

In addition, in past legal practice, in most cases, defendants (accomplices) who assisted in money laundering or fraud generally did not face civil compensation claims after receiving non-prosecution in criminal cases. However, recent court opinion has pointed out that even if a person is not prosecuted in criminal proceedings, this does not exclude the possibility of seeking compensation through independent civil proceedings. If the plaintiff chooses to file a civil lawsuit, and the civil court finds that the defendant was negligent, the defendant may still be required to compensate the victim for the amount of the loss.