Over the past four months, cryptocurrency scammers have stolen more than $200,000 from southern Bruce County residents. From unsolicited malware offering technical assistance for crypto payments to people being duped by fraudulent online crypto companies, digital currency scammers are preying on Bruce County residents.
“We also see job scams where people are offering work from home jobs online, and they have to work with them with cryptocurrency instead of traditional funds, and that job never materializes,” said the South Bruce OPP officer. , Matthew Thorpe.
It’s unclear why so many people in southern Bruce County are being targeted, but cryptocurrency-based scams have cost Canadians more than $309 million in 2023.
“What happens is these victims go online and deal directly with the scammers who teach them how to open a crypto wallet, how to transfer their crypto, and then they are shown on these platforms the size of their investment, when in fact it’s not true,” said Detective Constable Joel Armit, a member of the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Racketeering Branch.
The OPP has just launched Project Atlas to inform the public about the increase in cryptocurrency scams and how to best protect themselves. However, for hundreds of Canadians, it is already too late.
“My dad actually got scammed with a bitcoin that people were talking about and advertising about. He put all this money in a virtual wallet and then it’s gone, all the money is gone, he can’t find it, he can’t go back, and I think it was between $5 and $8,000 , something like that,” said Braeden Keenan of Ottawa.
South Bruce OPP Officer Matthew Thorpe at Walkerton OPP headquarters on January 8, 2025 (Scott Miller/CTV News London)
Cst. Thorpe said that while the scam methods such as computer pop-ups offering technical support or posing as grandchildren in trouble are the same, the payment method using cryptocurrency makes fraudulent payments more difficult for police to track, which is exactly why criminals do it. he.
“Just use extreme caution.” There are legitimate cryptocurrency investment companies, but as I discovered myself, there are many illegitimate ones as well. So you can contact the Better Business Bureau or the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center for advice on this, or just do a few Google searches,” Thorpe said.
You can learn to protect yourself at Ontario Provincial Police – Project ATLAS
