Conmen and Kidnappers: Crypto Criminals

President Trump’s embrace of the cryptocurrency industry should not be considered a green light for average investors to put their money at risk in the volatile and dangerous world of digital currencies. The Trump family has issued ‘meme coins’ (whose value has plummeted), launched a company that has issued a ‘stablecoin’—a type of digital currency that pegs its value to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar, and invested in a bitcoin mining company. The president also signed an executive order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve and a stockpile for other cryptocurrencies. But average investors will not be treated like the president and his family in the rough and tumble crypto world that is a breeding ground for con men.

The latest cryptocurrency headlines provide new warnings. Creditors are suing former crypto mogul Barry Silbert who in 2015 founded Digital Currency Group and its lending business Genesis Capital. The creditors allege Silbert, and his associates, funneled $800 million out of the lender as it was headed towards bankruptcy while telling investors, including billionaire Mark Cuban, that their money was safe.

Separately, two cryptocurrency investors face criminal charges for allegedly kidnapping a wealthy crypto trader, torturing him, and holding him hostage in Manhattan for three weeks, in an effort to gain the password to the victim’s crypto account. The victim eventually escaped from his captors. Last year, a couple in Connecticut driving a Lamborghini vehicle was kidnapped by six men who believed their son held a huge amount of cryptocurrency. These are just two in a string of abduction cases in the U.S. and around the world that have seen investors victimized by cryptocurrency criminals.