Online fraudsters are rapidly adapting their activities to run more impactful scams of shorter duration, in a bid to mitigate “discovery and disruption,” according to blockchain analysts.
Blockchain investigation firm Chainalysis claimed in the latest instalment of its mid-year update report that online scams are one of the largest areas of illegal activity that it monitors, with billions of dollars’ worth of crypto flowing to illicit accounts in the year to date (YTD).
However, over two-fifths (43%) of these “inflows” YTD have gone to wallets that only became active this year, “suggesting a surge in new scams,” it said. The next highest year, 2022, saw only 30% of scam inflows go to wallets newly active that year.
The average number of days that scams are active is also decreasing. In 2024 YTD it stands at 42, down from 271 in 2020.
“This macro trend is consistent with the continued pivot of scammers from elaborate Ponzi schemes that cast a wide net to more targeted campaigns like pig butchering or address poisoning, driven in part by increasing enforcement efforts and stablecoin issuers blacklisting scam addresses,” Chainalysis said.
Read more on online scams: FBI: Scammers Are Sending Couriers to Collect Cash From Victims
Pig butchering – where victims are lured into a relationship by dating site scammers and then tricked into making fake investments – remains one of the most lucrative cybercrime types for fraudsters, the report claimed.
One wallet, which consolidates funds from multiple scams operating from notorious Myanmar pig butchering compound “KK Park,” has netted $100m YTD. Some of these funds may have come in the form of ransom payments from relatives of victims that are often coerced into running these scams, Chainalysis said.
The report also goes into some detail about Huione Guarantee, a notorious online marketplace, outed in July as a hotbed of fraud and money laundering.
The platform has processed more than $49bn in cryptocurrency transactions since 2021, Chainalysis claimed.
“Huione Guarantee has grown into a large and diverse ecosystem that supports the lucrative pig butchering operations that continue to operate in Southeast Asia,” the report noted.