Are You a Victim of Crypto Crime? Good Luck Getting Help

September 29, 2022
WIRED

Types : Bylined Articles

Local law enforcement isn’t ready to deal with this new type of fraud, even with shady scams on the rise.

WHEN CHRIS GOLAS called the cops to report that he had been the victim of crypto crime, he was met with total incomprehension. “People didn’t even know what I was talking about,” he recalls.

Golas, a project manager, had tried to invest using Digifox, a cryptocurrency platform founded by the influential YouTuber Nicholas Merton in 2019. The platform was plagued by technical problems, and Golas found himself unable to make swaps after depositing funds. He got error message after error message. He kept reporting the issue, and customer service representatives told him a solution was in the works. Then in April of 2022, Digifox announced that the platform would be shutting down all operations that June.