Scammers offer free bitcoin on a hacked Russian government website.

Scammers have organized a fake bitcoin giveaway through a hacked Russian government. The news of the attack comes after a recent report revealed that damages from crypto-related fraud in Russia had reached $30 million in value in the first half of this year. The main website of the local administration in the Russian city of Ryazan, around 200 km southeast of Moscow, has been targeted by hackers twice in a single day, Rzn.info reported quoted by the crypto news outlet Forklog.  

Scammers offer a fake bitcoin giveaway. 

The unidentified attackers published an ad offering cryptocurrency to those who download a special application. The scammers initially promised to send 0.025 ВТС to every visitor who installed the app. They later changed the offer to a prize of $1,000 in bitcoin for each of five randomly chosen participants in what was advertised as the “Ryazani online lottery.” Both ads have already disappeared from the mayoral site, but the local news outlet published a screenshot of one of the ads.

Crypto fraud in Russia is valued at $30 million this year.

The volume of cryptocurrency-related fraud around the world has increased significantly in 2021. During the first half of the year, losses amounted to an estimated $1.5 billion, which is two to three times more than the total registered during the same period of last year, experts from the IT security company Zecurion told the Russian daily Izvestia. According to the report published earlier this week, the Russian Federation accounts for 2% of the global amount – some $30 million, or almost 2.2 billion rubles. Analysts believe the main reasons for the spike stem from the growing exposure of users to cryptocurrencies as well as the desire to make quick profits in an expanding sector with limited regulations amid volatility in the traditional financial markets.