Fiji Officials Warns Residents of Cryptocurrency Scams

The Fiji Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has issued a warning to the members of the public concerning a scam that is being publicized in the country.

According to Razim Buksh, the FIU Director, the cryptocurrency scam running in the country is asking prospective investors to inject funds into Bitcoin. These schemes are advertised on Viber alongside a government agency's logo and official.

"These advertisements are fake," FIU director Razim Buksh said. "The fake advertisements state that individuals in Fiji can purchase bitcoin, foreign exchange, and binary trading using their mobile money wallets or bank transfers. The advertisement provides two phone numbers for further enquiries. A local number and a foreign number."

Razim said there is no Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) that is legally approved to operate in the country, and that the only legal tender in the nation is the fiat note issued by the Fiji Reserve Bank. That attempt to conduct transactions outside of the approved brokers will be considered a violation of the Exchange Control Act. 

The FIU advised all residents to be watchful of investment offers and provided a list of things that constitutes a red flag that should be watched out for before pitching tents with any acclaimed investment service provider.

As noted by the Fiji Times report, the red flags include but are not limited to "Use of the existing marketing material of government agencies or reputable entities. These are usually fake; You are asked to deposit funds into different accounts held in the names of an individual as opposed to a business or a reputable financial institution; grammatical errors often depict the works of non-professionals."

Scams are commonplace in the crypto world, and investors have continued to lose billions of dollars on an annualized basis to these fraudulent investment offerings. Scams are not peculiar to a particular country, and authorities are known to always issue warnings such as this one sent out by the Fiji regulator.

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