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"Ponzi schemes."
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Improving Ponzi Scheme Contract Detection Using Multi-Channel TextCNN and Transformer
With the development of blockchain technologies, many Ponzi schemes disguise themselves under the veil of smart contracts. The Ponzi scheme contracts cause serious financial losses, which has a bad effect on the blockchain. Existing Ponzi scheme contract detection studies have mainly focused on extracting hand-crafted features and training a machine learning classifier to detect Ponzi scheme contracts. However, the hand-crafted features cannot capture the structural and semantic feature of the source code. Therefore, in this study, we propose a Ponzi scheme contract detection method called MTCformer (Multi-channel Text Convolutional Neural Networks and Transofrmer). In order to reserve the structural information of the source code, the MTCformer first converts the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of the smart contract code to the specially formatted code token sequence via the Structure-Based Traversal (SBT) method. Then, the MTCformer uses multi-channel TextCNN (Text Convolutional Neural Networks) to learn local structural and semantic features from the code token sequence. Next, the MTCformer employs the Transformer to capture the long-range dependencies of code tokens. Finally, a fully connected neural network with a cost-sensitive loss function in the MTCformer is used for classification. The experimental results show that the MTCformer is superior to the state-of-the-art methods and its variants in Ponzi scheme contract detection.
Journal Article
Cryptocurrencies and future financial crime
BackgroundCryptocurrency fraud has become a growing global concern, with various governments reporting an increase in the frequency of and losses from cryptocurrency scams. Despite increasing fraudulent activity involving cryptocurrencies, research on the potential of cryptocurrencies for fraud has not been examined in a systematic study. This review examines the current state of knowledge about what kinds of cryptocurrency fraud currently exist, or are expected to exist in the future, and provides comprehensive definitions of the frauds identified.MethodsThe study involved a scoping review of academic research and grey literature on cryptocurrency fraud and a 1.5-day expert consensus exercise. The review followed the PRISMA-ScR protocol, with eligibility criteria based on language, publication type, relevance to cryptocurrency fraud, and evidence provided. Researchers screened 391 academic records, 106 of which went on to the eligibility phase, and 63 of which were ultimately analysed. We screened 394 grey literature sources, 128 of which passed on to the eligibility phase, and 53 of which were included in our review. The expert consensus exercise was attended by high-profile participants from the private sector, government, and academia. It involved problem planning and analysis activities and discussion about the future of cryptocurrency crime.ResultsThe academic literature identified 29 different types of cryptocurrency fraud; the grey literature discussed 32 types, 14 of which were not identified in the academic literature (i.e., 47 unique types in total). Ponzi schemes and (synonymous) high yield investment programmes were most discussed across all literature. Participants in the expert consensus exercise ranked pump-and-dump schemes and ransomware as the most profitable and feasible threats, though pump-and-dumps were, notably, perceived as the least harmful type of fraud.ConclusionsThe findings of this scoping review suggest cryptocurrency fraud research is rapidly developing in volume and breadth, though we remain at an early stage of thinking about future problems and scenarios involving cryptocurrencies. The findings of this work emphasise the need for better collaboration across sectors and consensus on definitions surrounding cryptocurrency fraud to address the problems identified.
Journal Article
Poison feather
\"When jailed billionaire Charles Merrick hints publicly that he has stashed a fortune in an offshore cache, a school of sharks converges upon his release from Federal prison. Among his swindled victims is Judge Hammond Birk, the man who saved Gibson Vaughn's life when he was a troubled teenager. Now Gibson intends to repay that debt by recovering Merrick's victims' money. But Gibson isn't the only one on the trail of the hidden fortune.The promise of billions has drawn a horde of ruthless treasure hunters, including an edgy ex-con, a female bartender with a mysterious history, a Chinese spy with a passion for fly-fishing, and a veritable army of hardened mercenaries. To stay ahead of the sharks and win justice for his mentor, Gibson will need all his formidable skills. But at the end of the road, he'll still have to face 'Poisonfeather'-- a geopolitical secret that just might get Gibson killed ... or worse\"-- Dust jacket.
Book
Steel's
In a casual quest to find his long-lost great uncle Clayton Pickard, Dyer stumbled upon a little-known story of unbounded success and devastating failure in the history of Steel’s Stores. In 1919 L.R. Steel founded a five-and-dime store in Buffalo which would eventually grow to a chain of 225 stores across America and Canada (including one in Syracuse), with nearly 5,000 employees and 40,000 investors. The stores provided jobs for men returning to the workforce after World War I, employed women, the elderly and the disabled, and incorporated many of the business tactics that current corporations employ (vertical investment, P.R., even infomercials). Steel bought sugar factories and coal fields to produce for the stores, he sold millions of dollars’ worth of stocks in the company, and provided easy credit for both employees and customers. But by 1923, Steel was bankrupt and the company was struggling to satisfy outraged investors and federal investigators. Within a year, Steel would die of a stroke and his wife would move from the expansive estate named in her honor to a boarding house. Clayton Pickard, Dyer’s ancestor, had a meteoric rise through the ranks as a \"Steelite,\" but when he was implicated in the scandal he disappeared, leaving behind a wife and children. In the course of writing the book, Dyer discovered what happened to Clayton and what kind of life he led after Steel’s. The text explains in an understandable way the financial decisions which led to the company’s fall, and illustrates how this scandal relates to (and ultimately eclipses in scope) the original Ponzi scheme. The book has many photographs and clippings from \"Steel Sparks,\" the company newsletter, which provide a fascinating glimpse of the corporate, as well as the social, world of 1920s America.
eBook
No one would listen : a true financial thriller
Harry Markopolos and his team of financial sleuths discuss first-hand how they cracked the Madoff Ponzi scheme No One Would Listen is the thrilling story of how the Harry Markopolos, a little-known number cruncher from a Boston equity derivatives firm, and his investigative team uncovered Bernie Madoff's scam years before it made headlines, and.
eBook
Madoff : the final word
\"Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff's epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme's exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Richard Behar's relationship with Madoff began in 2011 with a simple email request from the inmate. By the time Madoff died in 2021, he had sent Behar more than 300 emails and dozens of handwritten letters, participated in some fifty phone conversations, and sat for three in-person jailhouse interviews--a level of access provided to no other reporter. Behar also established relationships with hundreds of regulators, prosecutors, FBI agents, investors, Wall Street experts, ex-employees of Madoff's, family members, school classmates, and others. The result is the final word on the criminal behind history's most enduring fraud--and on those who believed him, covered for him, or locked him up. Behar illuminates not only the fraud's origins--decades earlier than Madoff claimed in his confession--but also the complicity of investors, Wall Street insiders, family members, and some of the largest banks in the US and Europe. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar's dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren't many innocents left standing by the end of this tale. Just about everyone involved is guilty, at a minimum, of humanity's most consistent weakness: greed\"-- Amazon.com.
Book
Ponzi Schemes as Africa's Twenty-First-Century Shylocks: Complicities in Femi Osofisan's Love's Unlike Lading: A Comedy from Shakespeare and Fires Burn and Die Hard
This article equates the antics of Shakespeare's Shylock with Ponzi schemes in contemporary Africa. Given the paucity of literary works on Ponzi schemes, it focuses on Nigeria to invoke a correspondence between usury and Ponzi schemes, using the former as a metaphor philosophically to account for the latter. Its discoveries afford an intertextual critique of Nigerian author Femi Osofisan's Love's Unlike Lading , its prototype, Merchant of Venice , and Fires Burn and Die Hard . With the background of New Historicism and intertextual theories, this study reconceptualizes Shakespeare's Shylock as Ponzi schemes, which are economic wolves in the dress of a humanitarian lamb, as they take more than a pound of flesh from investors who are effectively complicit in their own predicaments. It signals a place for literature in the quest for authorities and cybersecurity professionals to rid Africa and cyberspace of get-rich-quick schemes.
Journal Article