Scams keep haunting crypto market, aided by AI and social media

It’s not just fake headshots and misleading websites: Apparent fraudsters have attempted to feign legitimacy with false press releases about venture-capital fundraises and bogus claims about partnerships with industry giants. — Bloomberg

When Jakob-Moritz Eberl clicked on a link to the website of a crypto company, he was stunned at what he saw: his own face looking back at him.

Eberl’s headshot was displayed under the name “Mason Jones” and the title “Senior Blockchain Engineer” as one of six men the site claimed were on the team behind InfinityStakeChain. A near-duplicate website for a platform called FlexyStakes used the same photos above different names, identifying Eberl as “Noel Brennan”. Eberl, a social scientist at the University of Vienna who doesn’t even own any crypto, had no idea why his picture was on the sites.