The computer emergency response team Group-IB (CERT-IB) discovered fraud investment schemes targeting Eurasia and North America. The victims were made to transfer money to the scammers’ fake investment portal and promised huge profits against the investment. Celebrity stories titled “how I got rich” were shared to make their schemes look authentic. The scammers created realistic websites that were featured on Facebook and YouTube. The websites displayed convincing stories to build confidence. The system offered 700 euros for an investment of 250 euros in 3 days.
The Group-IB Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IB), which helps with DDoS attacks, phishing, and similar online threats, detected a group of over 10,000 resources employed to dupe people with fake investment schemes. The scheme stated that on payment of 250 euros, people could do what ‘Gert Verhulst’ has done. Gert, a famous television producer in the Netherlands, was one of the faces used by scammers to lure investors. CERT-GIB found a vast network of rogue resources working to dupe people from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK.
The scammers put high-quality templates with relevant topics to make their advertisements look credible. They lured investors with hoax success stories and fake profits, encouraging them to register, enter account details, and even sent links to fill out the online form. The fake promotions and success stories of people were tailored to reflect the city of the victims to win their confidence.
The fake investment portal had a dummy account manager to show increased profits, inauthentic links to add more money to their investment, altered figures on the dashboard to satisfy the victims, and a fake page asking for credit card details. The victims were duped of their money after all these stages of data sharing were completed.
