Coindesk
Originally Posted: Jan 29, 2015
Scams promising bitcoin riches have netted swindlers at least $11m in the last four years, researchers have found.
Some 13,000 victims handed over their money unwittingly in 42 different scams over that time period, their data suggests.
However, the total amount of funds cheated from victims over this period is almost certainly higher than the estimated $11m the research identified.
A co-author of the research, Marie Vasek, said:
“There are a lot of scams that we couldn’t measure at all. There were scams we couldn’t find or verify … We think presenting our findings as they are, a lower bound, makes a lot of room for us and others to further quantify scams in this space.”
Vasek, who researches computer security at Southern Methodist University, co-wrote the paper with Tyler Moore, an assistant professor in computer science at the same institution. READ MORE