Marathon Digital Holdings has issued a public warning about fraudulent activities conducted under its brand name, disclosing in a June 15 press release that it had detected a series of fraudulent websites, apps, and communications falsely claiming to be associated with Marathon.
According to Marathon, such fraudulent activities include deceptive communications by individuals pretending to be Marathon employees and the proliferation of websites and apps claiming to be affiliated with the company.
Additionally, the company claimed that it had been made aware of “counterfeit stock certificates, allegedly sold by third parties, particularly in Russia… which are produced in foreign languages [and] are purportedly being marketed to unsuspecting individuals.”
Marathon does not offer accounts for individual investors to participate in cryptocurrency mining, nor does the company does not accept money from individual investors. It warns the public:
“If you have been contacted by any person(s) purporting to be acting on behalf of, or in connection with, Marathon to invest in cryptocurrency mining, be aware that these individuals are not authorized representatives of Marathon.”
Marathon further clarified that it does not issue stock certificates in any language nor sell its stock directly to individuals and that any such solicitations to the contrary are fraudulent.
Russia is a persistent hotbed of crypto-related crime. In 2022, a Chainalysis report revealed that Russia had already become the world leader in illicit revenue from crypto because of the high volume of ransomware and money laundering operations located there. Almost half of them operate out of Federation Tower in Moscow.
On June 9, the U.S. Department of Justice charged two Russians for conspiracy to launder funds stolen from Mt. Gox hack from 2011 to 2014.
Marathon advised victims of these fraudulent schemes are advised to report their experiences to a local FBI office or through the Internet Crime Complaint Center at https://www.ic3.gov/.
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