The central bank of Rwanda has released a PSA – public service announcement – to warn against the crypto-related crimes in the nation. 

Specifically, the PSA issued by the bank mentioned the scams related to initial coin offering (ICO), as well as pyramid schemes targeting cryptocurrency, which conned investors into giving them funds, with promises of a handsome return. Numerous businesses have been operating this type of scam on Rwandan soil, nominally Supermarketings Global Ltd, 3 Friends System (3FS) Group Ltd, OneCoin, and Kwakoo (OnyxCoin).

The National Bank of Rwanda advised crypto investors to run a thorough background check on potential projects, and further notified the public that should anyone victimized by the scams, they will not receive any financial aid from the bank.

As stated in a Cointelegraph report, an analysis published last year revealed that a majority of ICOs issued within 2018 were scams, which accounted for 80% of the total number. However, frauds and scams only took up a small fracture (11%) of the total money put towards ICOs within the year.

May 2019 has also witnessed a rise in the number of crypto scams across the globe. The Russian police force has brought into custody the criminal behind a crypto pyramid scheme in Kazakhstan, which conned an investor of this country off 14 million Kazakhstan tenge ($36,700), reported by The Crypto Sight on June 1.