THEY COIN IT IN ON LIES

FAKE Jamie Oliver’s image is used on a story written to snare victims Research will be published today which should help explain why so many people fall for bogus investments in “cryptoassets” such as Bitcoin.

I understand that the Financial Conduct Authority findings will show that victims are often influenced by social media into seeing g crypto as a shortcut to making easy money.

This echoes my own experiences of cyptocurrency crooks whose online posts fraudulently use the names of financial giants such as Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson to give credence to their schemes.

Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert has taken legal action against Facebook for running adverts by get-rich-quick crooks who use his name without authority.

Now conmen have moved on to faking endorsements by less obvious celebrities.

Ant McPartlin has had his name used by scammers promoting bogus Bitcoin investments, somewhat oddly given his drink problems.

Comedian Jim Davidson and chef Jamie Oliver have also had their names taken in vain.

“Chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver has announced his 100 million dollar investment in Bitcoin Future and he is expecting double the value of investment in just half an year,” ran the post on newsinternet.online, written, I assume, by someone with English as a second language.

Bitcoin Future claims that by making 200 automated trades a day on your behalf it can turn an initial £500 stake into £2,960 in 24 hours.

“We have never had a user who has lost his investe invested money,” it implausibly states.

Clicking on the Bitcoin Future ad takes you to TraderUR.com.

This site says it is operated by a company called T Technoric Ltd, r registered in

S St Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean.

I emailed asking for some basic due diligence details such as the names of its directors and what body, if any, regulates it, but I’ve had no reply.

Invest at your peril.

■ More than £100million has gone missing from digital “wallets” controlled by the QuadrigaCX exchange.

The shock discovery came following the sudden death in December of the exchange’s founder, 30-year-old Gerald Cotten, of Canada, the only person with the passwords to the wallets that were supposed to hold cryptocurrencies of around 115,000 customers.

QuadrigaCX announced to its customers this week: “We do not have all the answers right now.” HIJACKED A bogus Jim Davidson story

People see crypto as a shortcut to making easy money