The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) warned the public on Christmas Eve against the rising number of cryptocurrency investment scams in the country.

According to CICC Executive Director Alexander Ramos, banks have already noticed several cases of depositors "losing millions in the past few days due to cryptocurrency scams."

The depositors, however, allegedly refused to report the incidents to authorities.

"We have already warned the public as early  as November about the surge in cryptocurrency scams, and now it is becoming worse because scammers are taking advantage of the Christmas and year-end bonuses of the people,” Ramos said in a statement.

Cryptocurrency or crypto has become a popular investment instrument due to its surge in value. One crypto in mind would be the bitcoin which had a $500-price in May 2016, but as of December 24, 2024, has a price of $93,730.

The CICC also said that crypto scammers' ways of stealing from their victims have changed or evolved from before, wherein they open digital accounts now which easily disappear as soon as investors have deposited between P100,000 to more than a million.

"Bankers have been very concerned about this development because their depositors have been directly transferring funds from local bank accounts to this fly-by-night digital accounts," CICC said.

Ramos said that if people are interested in investing on something, they should only transfer their funds to BSP-supervised platforms.

CICC has advised victims to call the Inter-Agency Response Center (IARC) hotline 1326 to further their investigation on the matter.