John not real name thought he had found a friend. For years, the South African man sent money sometimes small transfers, sometimes larger ones to a woman he met online. Over four and a half years, he sent Anna millions of rands after she told him she was jailed and needed help with attorney fees. By the time he realised it was a scam, he had transferred more than ZAR 4 M USD 227 K, mostly in cryptocurrency, across 80 separate transactions.
Cases like John's are increasingly common in South Africa, where cryptocurrency adoption is among the highest in the world and scams are growing in sophistication. In just three months, the exchange, Luno, says it handled over 500 customer queries linked to scams. The company has more than 14 million users globally, and while the fraction affected is small, the sums lost are devastating and almost always irretrievable.
South Africa has become one of the largest crypto markets on the continent. Surveys suggest as many as one in ten adults hold digital assets. That growth has come alongside an expanding ecosystem of payments, trading, and new products, such as tokenised U.S. stocks.
