Crypto scam reporting needs to move ‘under one umbrella’ — Coinbase CSO

The reporting of crypto scams in the United States is currently handled by a patchwork of agencies that should be streamlined to better protect consumers, says Coinbase chief security officer Philip Martin.

“It’s a very fragmented ecosystem. Where do you report these things? Well, you go here, you go there, you go somewhere else,” Martin told Cointelegraph at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

“That then helps drive resources from the whole federal government to do more to address some of the underlying causes, he added.

The US has dozens of federal and state-level agencies that handle reports of financial and internet crimes, one of which is the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which gives victims a way to report cybercrime.

Martin said that crypto scam victims are reporting to authorities, but it “feels like they’re screaming into the void to like IC3 or some of the government reporting websites.”

He added the various reporting sites should be consolidated “into a single reporting system that not only has all the data in one place but that also, in a perfect world, gives victims some visibility.”

On an earlier panel regarding online fraud, in which Martin took part, retired FBI agent Roger Campbell said many victims of crypto romance scams search the internet for how to report the crime and “all kinds of information comes up.”

“It’s kind of frustrating,” he said. Campbell gave the example of the UK as a country with an “awesome reporting system” where one portal is used to report all crimes, and victims can follow the status of their complaints.

FBI’s Roger Campbell (center left) on a panel with Coinbase’s Philip Martin (center right). Other panelists include former Twitter safety lead Yoel Roth (right) and MSNBC reporter Mackenzie Sigalos (left). Source: Turner Wright / Cointelegraph

“You report something to the IC3, you never hear anything back 99% of the time,” he added. “It gets frustrating again for the victim. They almost feel victimized again.”

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Coinbase’s Martin told Cointelegraph that scams have a “lag in reporting,” and the way that attackers carry out schemes today won’t be known for months.

“A scam may have happened six months ago, and we might hear about it tomorrow,” he said.

Another difficulty in policing crypto scams, according to Martin, is that they’re “by and large” conducted from outside the US in countries including Myanmar and Laos, where “it can be hard for law enforcement to reach into those areas and really sort of strangle the stuff at the root. “

He said combatting crypto scams should focus on international relations and the US, “making it a priority to work with governments around the world so that there’s no safe haven for these scammers.”

Meanwhile, on March 10, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation said it received over 2,600 complaints last year and found seven types of scams it hadn’t yet discovered, including crypto mining, gaming, jobs and giveaway scams.

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Additional reporting by Turner Wright.