An Abu Dhabi resident who was lured into a fraudulent bitcoin investment scheme had her Instagram account compromised, leading to her followers being scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars. Palestinian Canadian first-aid trainer Tamim received a message on her Instagram account from the brother of an old friend who had moved to London a few years prior. “He convinced me to invest in Bitcoins and said he would open an account for me, promising that I would receive a code on my phone which I needed to share with him,” she recounted. “I shared the code with him in the Instagram chat box and was immediately locked out of my account. I called his sister to inquire what was happening, and she informed me that her brother had also been hacked.” Fortunately, Tamim herself was not financially affected, but several of her followers were not so lucky.
“The following day, I awoke to numerous messages inquiring about my investment and how I managed to win one hundred thousand dirhams!” The hackers were sending her followers images of golden coins and cash, accompanied by teasers like ‘Muna won this much, do you want to win as well?’ For two weeks, Tamim attempted to regain control of her account while the hacker managed to deceive three victims into paying over Dh10,000 each. “One of my followers, a banker in Dubai, contacted my father, complaining that she had paid $30,000 after I messaged her on Instagram inviting her to invest with some agency so she could benefit as I did. She even demanded that we repay her the money she lost,” Tamim explained. Another victim from Saudi Arabia called her, revealing that she had borrowed her husband’s credit card without his knowledge to pay $2000 to the fraudsters.
“I began receiving calls from friends of friends that I hadn’t seen in years. One woman who was unemployed at the time said she had argued with her older sister to lend her money so she could pay them around Dh30,000. She was unaware that she had been deceived and called me while I was training at the gym, asking for advice on how to win as I did. When I informed her it was a scam, she was stunned.” Tamim eventually managed to close her account by paying an IT agent in Dubai Dh500 for the service. “I messaged Instagram multiple times, but they did not respond. I wanted to wait until they could retrieve my account from the hacker so I could maintain my followers. However, I realized too much damage had been done and many people were losing their savings over my account, so I decided to terminate it in any possible way.” After creating a new account, Tamim said she had learned her lesson and no longer accepts messages or follow requests from strangers. “I also don’t open any links from unknown numbers on WhatsApp,” she added.
Lt Col Ali Al Nuaimi, Head of Cyber Crime Security at Abu Dhabi Police, stated that cases of con artists taking over social media accounts to deceive their friends are quite prevalent. “This is social engineering. They manipulate you into divulging your username and password to register for some kind of lottery or investment and then take over your account to deceive your followers, assuming they will have more trust in the process if the message comes from you.” Such scammers do not necessarily need to directly hack into accounts to execute their scheme. Sometimes it could be a case of identity theft. “They direct you to another webpage they have created where you must log in using your Instagram username and password, and they take it from there. They don't need to do any hacking. You provided them with the key by giving your account details, and they can then easily impersonate you to gain your friends’ trust,” he explained.
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