ICO Group Cryptocurrency Scam

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If your losses exceed £3,000 (in the UK) or $10,000 worldwide The Crypto Adviser can offer advice on recovering your funds. 

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ICO Group – aka Investing Capital Online Group – appears to be a fake crypto investing platform that’s scamming unsuspecting investors out of their cash.

The Crypto Adviser was contacted by someone who described the scam as follows:

“Initially, I was contacted by one of their representatives proposing an attractive investment opportunity on their trading platform. They presented it as a good offer, asking me to only invest a small amount to start. After investing this initial sum, they then requested more funds, to which I invested an additional amount.

“Two months later, when I attempted to withdraw funds from my supposed earnings, the withdrawal was never processed. At that point, my account was showing profits of £20,000. Instead of allowing the withdrawal, the representatives then began constantly demanding I send more money for various bogus fees – insurance, accreditation to financial authorities, activation of transfer cards and more.

“Despite their polite phone manner and professional appearance, it became clear this was a scam operation. Different representatives would contact me with new reasons I needed to pay more, slowly extracting more from me through their fraudulent claims. They claimed my account balance had grown hugely in less than a week, requiring even more payments for taxes and insurance.

“Once I stopped engaging and making further payments, they began threatening me with charges of 40% per day for delaying required payments. At no point was I able to withdraw any funds from my initial, or subsequent, investments.”

The person has described very well a common type of scam that continues to catch out would-be crypto investors.

How to check a crypto platform is legitimate

It can be very difficult to spot a crypto scam, but there are various things you should look out for, including:

• Do the profits on offer seem unrealistically high?
• Can you reliably check the platform is being run by a genuine company?
• How do you hear about the investment? Were you contacted by someone online?
• Does the platform have social media channels? Check to see how far back the posting history goes.
• If at any stage you’re being threatened, you should go to the police immediately. Legitimate companies would never employ this kind of tactic.
• Does the platform’s website contain all the information you’d expect from a legitimate company, such as team info and business registration?
• Is the content of the website accurate and grammatically correct?

You should always carry out thorough checks and due diligence before sending money to anyone claiming to represent a financial organisation.

If you suspect a site is fake, get in touch.

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