In an interview with CNBC, FBI special agent Sean Ragan claimed that cryptocurrency investment scammers on LinkedIn pose a “serious concern” to user safety.
Ragan warned all the LinkedIn users about crypto scams. He also believes that when it comes to investment fraud, LinkedIn has a problem.
“This type of fraudulent activity is significant. There are many potential victims, and there are many past and current victims,” said Ragan.
The social network, owned by Microsoft, has 830 million users from over 200 countries. These con artists may appear very convincing because they are not lazy, Ragan stated.
As per Ragan, “They are always thinking about different ways to victimize people, victimize companies. And they spend their time doing their homework, defining their goals and their strategies, and their tools and tactics that they use.”
The FBI has seen an uptick in investment-related fraud, as per Ragan. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the US cryptocurrency dealers lost around $575 million due to investment fraud between January 2021 and March 2022.
Microsoft owned, LinkedIn focuses on business news and contacts, giving consumers a false sense of security in the face of common romance and internet scams. False accounts frequently pretend to be linked with legitimate and successful firms or to represent people with “entrepreneurial spirit”, as per the CNBC study.
The number of scammers on LinkedIn is rising, according to LinkedIn’s director of the trust, privacy, and equity, Oscar Rodriguez.
“Over the last few months, we’ve seen a rise in fraudulent activity happening across the Internet, including here on LinkedIn,” Rodriguez wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
Also Read: India’s GainBitcoin Scam Cheated 1 lakh People for Over Rs 1 Trillion
The organization claims to have a track record of proactively removing suspect content and accounts that could lead to fraud. According to a recent company transparency report, LinkedIn has removed over 136 million instances of spam and fraudulent information from its site by 2021. It also removed approximately 31.6 million fraudulent accounts last year.
Rodriguez told CNBC that in the future, he would like to see more “proactive education” about the dangers of using LinkedIn.
