Crypto Scam Victims in Portugal Lose $312,000

Two Portuguese citizens have lost over $312,000 to crypto fraudsters, and according to the police, more people are falling victim to these criminals.

According to CM-TV, the two individuals are from Cantanhede in the Coimbra District of Portugal.

By “staking” tokens on a platform, the pair may have been told they could expect “rapid profits.”

One of the two sent $213,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) to a wallet they believed belonged to a legitimate cryptocurrency company.

This individual was reportedly informed that they could earn over $800,000 by storing BTC on the platform.

The other sent a combined total of around $94,000 to the same firm over the course of a month.

However, the company appears to have been a front for an elaborate fraud, with both “investors” losing their money.

When told they would need to “pay an additional 3% of their stakes in fees” to withdraw their tokens, the pair began to suspect something was awry.

Later, the investors were informed that their coins had been “locked” and that the only way to retrieve them was to pay thousands of dollars in “unlocking fees.”

The two individuals eventually realized they had been duped and lodged a police report.

In a country once known as a crypto investor’s haven because (until recently) it did not tax crypto trading profits, police have reported an increase in crypto-related frauds over the past few months.

In the past two years, the number of cryptocurrency frauds has more than doubled, according to the Cybercrime Office.

This year, the office has received 94 reports of crypto-related fraud, compared to only 38 in 2021.

The victims complained to the police that they had “lost significant sums of money” on multiple platforms.

The Attorney General’s Office noted that by the time the majority of victims filed a complaint, “the majority of platforms had been taken offline without leaving any information or contact information that would allow [investigators] to ascertain which internet server they were using.”

Prosecutors in the country stated earlier this year that cybercrime, including an unspecified number of crypto schemes, was rising in Portugal.

In 2022, the government intends to tax crypto-related capital gains at a rate of 28 percent.