The CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance is planning a hiring spree in 2023, increasing the company’s head count by 15% to 30%. He says the firm needs to get “well-organized” ahead of the next crypto bull run.

In the past year, 46,000 Americans have lost more than $1 billion to cryptocurrency fraud [*]. According to the FTC, this is a 60x increase since 2018.

If a company or person claims they can make you big money or promise low risk and fast payouts, it’s always a scam. Even if they have testimonials from happy investors, those are fake.

Scammers impersonate new or established businesses that are entering the crypto market. They will use social media ads, news articles or a slick website to promote their crypto coin or token and trick you into buying it.

They might tell you the coin or token is backed by real-world assets like land, art or gold. They might even offer free cryptocurrency to try to sell you on it.

But these crypto coins and tokens are never backed by anything, they are just a scam to steal your money.

Criminals often launder cryptocurrency by using a technique known as “chain hopping.” This is a way of transferring funds between different types of Bitcoin and obscures their trail. They do this by changing the address of a transaction from one Bitcoin to another and moving the funds between multiple blockchains. They also use “mixers,” which anonymize transactions by mixing them with other funds, to lower the risk of detection.

The same method was used by Lazarus, a shady company linked to North Korea, in a $600 million heist. The company used a combination of online fraud, bribes and illegal wire transfers to scam victims into sending their Bitcoin to the fake company.

In the case of the Binance heist, investigators tracked the funds through many layers of bank accounts to Binance and another U.S.-based exchange, Kraken. They said the funds were then withdrawn or sent to a “mixer.”

Scammers often scam you by impersonating government agencies, law enforcement, utility companies and other organizations that you trust. They might tell you there’s a legal problem, or that your account or benefits are frozen as part of an investigation. They’ll even tell you to buy cryptocurrency for safe keeping.

These scams are often targeted when people have a lot of money to lose, such as if they’ve invested in a cryptocurrency crash. They’ll try to get you to send them your wallet information and seed phrase in order to retrieve your crypto. Then they’ll disappear, or transfer all of your crypto out of your wallet.

There are other ways that you can avoid these crypto recovery and refund scams. The most important thing to remember is that crypto can’t be retrieved once it’s sent — so anyone claiming to be able to return it is a scammer, whether they claim to be a recovery service or a crypto exchange.