UAE: Bitcoin Scam on Instagram Costs Followers Thousands
Recently a citizen of Abu Dhabi became victim of a bitcoin fraud that resulted in hacking of her Instagram account, therefore deceiving her followers out of tens of thousands of dollars.
On her Instagram, Palestinian-Canadian first-aid trainer Tamim got a message from someone identifying as the brother of an old acquaintance who had relocated to London. Saying he would set up the account on her behalf and asking her to give a code she would receive on her phone, the putative buddy persuaded her to buy Bitcoin.
Following the advice, Tamim entered the code into the Instagram chat and was immediately turned off from her account. Her friend's account had also been hacked, she discovered when she contacted her friend's sister to look into it. Tamim herself did not lose money in this process, fortunately; many of her followers were not so lucky.
Tamim discovered many messages from supporters asking about her purported Bitcoin success story, which had supposedly brought a profit of 100,000 dirhams, early morning. Using her account, hackers had been forwarding followers pictures of gold coins and money along with messages such, "Muna won this much, do you want to win as well?" These messages, meant to inspire others to make investments, fool three of her followers, each losing more than 10,000 dirhams.
After spending $30,000 to the frauds, one of Tamim's Dubai-based followers, a banker, contacted Tamim's father seeking to be compensated for her losses. To invest $2,000, another victim in Saudi Arabia had even borrowed her husband's credit card without his awareness. People Tamim hadn't heard in years came flooding in, all hoping to profit from this bogus investment chance. Unemployed at the time, one caller acknowledged she had pleaded with her sister for a loan to invest, believing she was following Tamim's "successful" path. The wife was heartbroken when Tamim detailed the fraud.
Tamim chose to close her account with an IT specialist in Dubai, who charged her 500 dirhams, after two weeks of trying to get control of it. She emailed Instagram several times but got no help. She had first wanted to keep her following, but she came to see the damage her hacked account was generating. Many of her supporters had lost big sums of money to the fraud by the time she effectively closed it down.
Since then, Tamim has opened a fresh account and increased vigilance to prevent more instances. She is cautious not to open unknown links on WhatsApp and no longer welcomes messages or follow requests from complete strangers. She claims that this encounter imparted a valuable online security lesson.
Lt. Col. Ali Al Nuaimi, Head of Cyber Crime Security for Abu Dhabi Police, clarified that this kind of fraud is "social engineering." Scammers take over social media profiles and use well-known identities to fool people into believing them, therefore abusing personal ties. Usually depending on identity theft, scammers do not require sophisticated hacking knowledge. They might, for instance, guide consumers to a phoney website looking to be a real one, where victims unwittingly enter login information. Getting usernames and passwords helps scammers to pass for people, thereby winning the confidence of friends and followers to execute dishonest plans.
This event emphasizes the need of being careful with links from untested sources and messaging. Even codes or login credentials, sharing private information might provide scammers access to personal accounts and target whole networks of friends and relatives with false offers.