Money Transfer scams are here to stay. With a Bitcoin/blockchain technology, there is now even more use cases. You can find the main types in this article.

2017 FTC vs. Western Union case contains a great description of various money transfer scams (see the full version here). The types of money transfer scams referenced in Western Union’s own complaint database for 2004-2015 include:

• Online or Internet purchases:  147 thousand complaints, $188 million losses
• Lottery or prize scams: 76 thousand complaints, $86 million losses
• Emergency scams (grandparent scams): 42 thousand complaints, $74 million losses
• Advance-fee loan scams: 71 thousand complaints, $44 million losses
• Online dating or romance scams (see example here): 45 thousand complaints, $41 million losses

Other popular types of money transfer scams:

• Bank scam: fraudsters pose as the bank, calling or texting a person from a phone number that resembles a bank’s phone (aka, “spoofing”). A person is persuaded that their bank account was hacked and they need to transfer funds into a different account (read more here)
• IRS scam: fraudsters impersonate government employees and ask for income tax payment (see example here)

• Bitcoin Purchase scam: consumer is contacted by fraudsters after applying for jobs or responding to ads online involving a promise to make money. The fraudsters send cheques to the victims and ask them to use the money to purchase Bitcoins by using their bank’s ATM card in a Bitcoin ATM machine in their area. The victims deposit the cheque (or sometimes e-transfer) into their accounts then use the funds to buy online currency and deposit the Bitcoins into someone else’s account. For doing this, they are told they can keep a certain amount of the money that was originally sent to them. However, a short time after the victim uses their own money to purchase the Bitcoins, the original cheque or e-transfer bounces (see more details here)
• Investment Pyramid scam: send money to invest with a hope of a superior and guaranteed return. The most famous pyramid scene of the last decade was MMM. Its Russian mastermind’s first pyramid was accomplished in the 1990s. He was allowed to launch more pyramids before finally ending up in with a long jail sentence. Once out, he organized another pyramid, this time via Bitcoin/Blockchain and on a global scale. Again, MMM had a few rounds till the founder’s death in 2018.

But MMM’s lessons and anonymity of Bitcoin were embraced by criminals in other countries with a corrupt financial oversight. OneCoin from Bulgaria and PlusToken from China schemed billions each before the governments reluctantly interfered (Russia is not even attempting to investigate MMM). The amount defrauded via Crypto/Blockchain has tripled in 2019 reaching $4.3B.