8 March 28 - april 3, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents that are also open during the early morning hours. They argue that is why the district court ruled in favor of the sexually oriented businesses, adding that the ordinance com- promised the business operators’ protected speech. Albright said the U.S. Supreme Court de- cision was not unexpected. Now, he said, the legal battle goes back to district court where a trial date will be set. “The fight is not over,” he said. ▼ CRYPTO WALLET BUTCHERING TEXANS ARE LOSING MILLIONS TO CRYPTOCURRENCY SCAMS. BY JACOB VAUGHN B ezalel Eithan Raviv is the co-founder of Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm in Israel. The company helps governments, corporations and indi- viduals around the world go after malicious crypto funding or recover lost funds. He said recovering money from crypto scammers is hypercomplex. “It’s like when you break an egg,” Raviv said. “Everything was contained beautifully before. Once you broke it, ask me to bring it back together. It requires skills.” One of the most recent crypto scams Raviv could recall came out of Dallas. A Dal- lasite got tricked into pressing a link for a supposed moneymaking campaign. “Every- one wants to press those today with infla- tion, prices are high, people need more money to end the month,” Raviv said. This Dallasite was asked to invest as little as $250 into what Raviv called “a clean cut dummy platform,” a fake platform for trading cryp- tocurrency. “He was seeing profits, incredi- ble profits, on the screen, not knowing that it’s all smoke and mirrors.” The Dallasite eventually saw through the scam, but only after throwing $500,000 into the fake platform. “That was everything he had,” Raviv said. “That is incredible, but it’s not original.” According to the FBI internet crime re- port last year, cryptocurrency investment scam losses rose from $2.57 billion in 2022 to $3.94 billion in 2023. “These scams are designed to entice those targeted with the promise of lucrative returns on their invest- ments,” the FBI report said. In 2023, the FBI received 43,653 complaints about crimes in- volving cryptocurrency. Another 25,815 complaints concerned cryptocurrency wal- let crimes. The FBI report does not break down crypto crimes by state but it found that Texans sent in more than 47,000 com- plaints related to internet crimes. They amounted to over a billion dollars in losses for Texans, according to the report. Even worse, Raviv has heard stories of people who hired recovery firms that turned out to be scams themselves. “What we see here is basically a huge operation of financial terrorism around the world that has two main motives,” he said. “One is for profit and the other is actually na- tions going after tier-one countries, such as the U.S., the UK, Australia, Germany, France. So, basically, we’re seeing that there is, behind the scenes, a lot of the crime in crypto; its birthplace are coun- tries that are of the triangle of China, Iran and Russia. So, there’s more to it than the eye actually meets.” Raviv said the com- pany also works with police departments on cases involving crypto. “They basically consider crypto as a big headache because of the anonymity around it,” Raviv said. “So, basically, they relinquish the cases very quickly after they’re being reported. And we kind of help to be that middle company, middle person, to offer the evi- dence, which will basically get them to act on behalf of our clients.” Jesse Carr, a spokesperson for the Dallas Police Department, said its financial crimes unit investigates all cryptocurrency scams that are reported to the department. “The unit works closely with federal partners to thoroughly investigate these types of cases because many times they can cross state and federal jurisdictions,” Carr said by email. “Since January 2023, the Dallas Police De- partment has investigated about 30 cases specifically involving cryptocurrency.” Raviv said crypto scams can be broken down into four kinds: fake trading plat- forms, pig butchering scams, wallet hacks and fake recovery services. “So, in fake trading platforms, we have dummy platforms,” he explained. “Basically you would call yourself, I don’t know, any name like Incredible FX, right? And you will invite people to make money, but there will be nothing behind this. You will not really be trading in the market.” There are also proxy platforms that will mimic popular existing trading platforms but with just a slightly dif- ferent domain name. Next are pig butchering scams. According to Time magazine, these get their name after the practice of farmers fattening hogs before slaughter. They may involve phishing people on social media or via text and tricking them into making fake crypto investments. Wallet hacks involve scammers using ma- licious smart contracts to withdraw money from any of your digital wallets. Lastly, fake recovery services are exactly what they sound like. You’ve lost money to a scammer and found a company that supposedly can help you get it back. Well, joke’s on you — that company’s a scam, too, and you’re not getting the money back that you paid them. Oftentimes, police don’t know how to handle crypto scams, Raviv said. Because of this, the scams may go underreported. “We’re receiving the cases, and we’re filter- ing the numbers, and we’re getting very dif- ferent numbers,” he said. According to Raviv, only one of 16 people will report a crypto scam case to the police. “This is the biggest struggle for real recovery services, that fake recovery services and all the other scammers out there enjoy the fact that law enforcement are not doing their job,” Raviv said. “The only victim here is the citizen be- cause there is a crime here that is not being attended to.” He called crypto scams a nationwide cri- sis. “We’re talking about an incredible threat, and we’re seeing, basically, lack of movement in addressing such a huge prob- lem,” Raviv said. “We really want to blow our horn to say something is going very, very wrong here.” Raviv still recommends victims report scams to the police, who might be able to put a freeze on a fraudulent crypto wallet, but it could take up to eight weeks to do so. Whatever you do, don’t relinquish your trust, Raviv said. “Our parents used to put their money in the bank,” he explained. “They would say ‘You bank my money. I trust you.’ But now everything is toward de- centralized, you have to trust yourself here. So, it’s a shift.” He added, “That’s why a lot of the people that are aged 45 to 65 are having a very diffi- cult time with crypto because they still con- sider that if your money is with FTX or Celsius, you’re 100% secure.” In reality, your security is questionable. Were he to write a book about all of this, Raviv said the last words would likely be, “Trust yourself and no one else.” He said, “It takes muscles to do that because we are departing from a generation where you would trust freely, especially in the U.S. and Canada.” If you are going to get in the crypto mar- ket or hire a recovery service, Raviv said to try to meet people you’re interacting with face-to-face. “They [scammers] have a very hard time doing this,” Raviv said. “They are very fearful of light.” ▼ SPORTS THE STARS ON ICE ARE YOUNG AND BRIGHT THE DALLAS STARS ARE BEING POWERED BY A PROMISING CORE OF YOUNG TALENTS. BY MATT MCCLEARIN Y outh. It’s nice when you have it in your own life, but it’s especially nice when your favorite team has it. And one of my teams, and hopefully yours, has it in abundance. As much is evident in the way that the prospective stars of the future have become fantastic standouts in the present for the Dallas Stars. Of the four major sports teams in town, the Stars of the National Hockey League tend to get put into the last slot in terms of popularity behind the Cowboys, Rangers and Mavericks. That’s because hockey can be somewhat of a niche pastime for those who don’t loyally follow it and because the Stars are the youngest major DFW-area franchise, having arrived in the fall of 1993. But right now, they are, aside from the World Champion Texas Rangers, of course, the major local franchise that is enjoying the most success. And on top of that, the hockey club just might have the brightest future of any team in town, including the Rangers, when it comes to competing for a championship. The Stars lost in the Western Conference Finals last year in a thrilling six-game series to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights. You might also remember the Stars squad that made it to the Stanley Cup Finals in the 2020 “bubble season.” But on the heels of those heartbreaking losses, the Stars now seem poised to run right back into the deep end of the NHL playoffs. Judg- ing by how this season has gone thus far, the Stars indeed have a legitimate chance to, as they say, “skate the Cup” for the first time since 1999. (Far more recently than the last time the Cowboys hoisted the Vince Lom- bardi trophy, I might add.) If you’re a hardcore Stars fan, you may smile with understanding as you read this. But if you’re curious about this team or have thoughts of jumping on a local bandwagon, just do it. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with the promising young core the team has assembled. The Stars have been one of the five best teams in the NHL all season long. They are, without a doubt, going to the playoffs. The question is will they be there as the Central Division winners or as a wild-card team? The Stars have incredible depth, thanks to smart drafting and player development that’s created an influx of talented young players. Last season saw the debut of Wyatt Johnston, who was a revelation in the play- offs and has carried that into a second con- secutive 20-plus goal campaign in his second season. He’s 20. That’s correct. He was a first-round pick in 2021. He can’t even legally drink a beer yet. Who was the second-round pick in that same draft? That would be Logan Stank- oven, the electric goal scorer who was just called up to the big club in February Getty Images Texas came in second to California in money lost to internet crimes, according to a 2023 FBI report. >> p10 Unfair Park from p6
