In a crypto crime webinar focusing on crimes that affect consumers, Eric Jardine, the cybercrimes research lead at blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis broke down how scammers shift their strategies as market situations change.

According to Jardine, while the overall crypto scam revenue dropped in 2022, not all scams behaved similarly.

While the Terra collapse in 2022 made crypto investors skeptical of making investments, scammers turned to other strategies, such as preying on greed with free giveaway scams and playing with people’s hearts through romantic scams.

Apart from the romance and giveaway scams, the cybercrimes professional also pointed out that a multi-level marketing scam took a huge chunk out of the $5.9 billion lost to scams in 2022. Jardine showed that among the top scams in the year, the Hyperverse scam racked up around $1.3 billion, roughly 22% of all the scam revenue in that year.

(By EZRA REGUERRA)