Inside the Fake Investment Platform Economy

Group-IB uncovers a sprawling fraudulent scheme that lures its victims in the US and Australia into making investments.

In this two-part report, Group-IB reveals how modern investment scams operate at scale in the United States and Australia, two of the most heavily targeted and financially impacted markets.

Discover how threat actors advertise and use fake investment platforms to lure potential investors to make deposits, by exploiting their victims using pig-butchering techniques such as romance and relationship scams, exploiting their trust that inevitably leads to significant financial losses.

US$187M

Estimated total revenue across connected fake investment platforms in the USA and Australia

208

Fraudulent and connected domains detected by Group-IB

Key findings:

Group-IBˇs Graph analysis of one confirmed fake investment platform (tethergloballtd[.]com) reveals it shares contact information with 23 other fake platforms and shares the same IP address with 208 additional fraudulent domains.

The estimated total revenue across the 208 connected platforms exceeds US$187 million across Australia and the United States, and this represents only one identified cluster.

All fake investment platforms identified by Group-IB exclusively accept cryptocurrency for deposits, bypassing traditional banking controls and complicating fund recovery.

Invest in what pays off: Stopping the fraud

Modern investment scams combine social engineering, infrastructure, and financial manipulation across multiple platforms. To disrupt them, businesses need visibility across the entire attack chain, from the first fake advertisement to the final transaction.

Group-IB’s Cyber Fraud Fusion approach connects these layers into a single operational picture and enables organizations to detect, correlate, and stop fraud before it affects your business and customers.

Threat Intelligence

Fraud Protection