with the war affecting national infrastructure, zelensky signed a law to make cryptocurrencies legal in ukraine. it's one of the few countries to do so. so far, ukraine says it's raised more than $70 million for the war effort in cryptocurrency alone. but shortly after, cybersecurity firms noticed a flurry of fraudulent emails cashing in on ukraine's conflict. the most recent numbers that i have in the past five days is, we're at about 2.8 million of these, specifically soliciting donations with fraudulent cryptocurrency wallet addresses, which is something we haven't seen before. i decided to take a closer look at some of the tactics used by criminals to exploit our social conscience. somebody's capitalising on this. and i had a feeling people would fall for this, and people are falling for this. it'sjust a pattern we are seeing. ax is a cybersecurity researcher based in london, and he's been receiving emails asking for donations for ukraine on a daily basis. mainly what scammers try to do is, they'll try to appeal to your emotions. that's one of the tactics we have seen, especially in these kinds of scams. they're including photos of women and children during the war, and soldiers. really, it's almost like if you click the link, you may feel an ounce of guilt. he sent me some of the emails he had received. 0ne claimed to be a plea for help from the director of a bombed children's hospital in zharkiv, a village in western ukraine. the email also mentioned a linkedin profile, which led to smile children's hospital in maharashtra, india. i looked for the clinic on google earth and asked ukrainian colleagues, but we found no evidence of a children's clinic. a reverse image search of the photo did match the facebook profile picture of a children's doctor, but he's from mexico city. and you can see that it's him from the place he works and his social media profiles. between busy shifts on a covid ward, we managed to speak. beyond reporting the fake profiles, there's not much that victims of identity theft can do. we contacted linkedin. they said... but the email claiming to be from maxim aronov also had a phone number. it's a +380 number, so that's a real ukrainian dialling code. phone beeps the call�*s failed straight away. so, um, iguess it's not a real number. cryptocurrency wallets are publicly viewable, and i wanted to see how much money this scam had made — nearly $600. but others are making much more from fake charity websites. as of today, this particular wallet has a total balance of over us $90,000. this wallet address had been used in other scams before, and it's not the only one. scammers are also pretending to be real charities, like the british red cross and nova ukraine, a non—profit run by ukrainians living in california. it's shocking to see the places that i know, i recognise, destroyed and damaged. it's difficult to see this, but it motivates me to do more for ukraine. the charity says it's raised more than $14 million for ukraine this year. so this is one of the emails i've been investigating that i believe is a scam, and it says it comes from nova ukraine, which is you. it's not nova ukraine. and the charity office supposedly says it is in ukraine. our offices are in palo alto. and what's really interesting is that it has a london postcode. i traced the london postcode to another charity, unicef uk. it is not accurate. the email itself is directly lifted, most of the content from it is directly lifted from an email which our supporters have received, with unicef replaced with the words "nova ukraine". this scam has made $540. and there are plenty of clues that it's fake — different email addresses in the "from" and "reply to" fields, a contact button with yet another fake email address, an ip address based in vietnam. what's your message for the people behind this scam? it would just be stop — you have to stop it. people really, really need funds right now to stay alive and to get to safety. i emailed all the scammers behind the emails i'd seen. not one of them got back to me. people are also using more subtle ways to make money from the war in ukraine on social media. we saw so many, you know, out of context videos - claiming to be ukraine or, you know, edited videos. claiming to be of ukraine. abbie richards is a tiktoker and a disinformation expert with half a million followers. she noticed scammers posting misleading videos to get in—app donations using a kind of virtual tiktok currency. we saw a lot of live streams that were pushing, like, - looped footage orjust kind of vaguely scary siren - noises and claiming - to be footage of ukraine when, in fact, they weren't. and that's a big way- to make, like, fast money. the way it works is tiktok users buying coins and then sending gifts to the people hosting live streams. the gifts look like emojis, hearts, roses, and they eventually have real cash value. it's easy business for scammers. sirens wail so we're hearing sirens on a loop, and then we see this fiery smoke i coming out of the building. and what i was able to capture. was this moment where a finger pops up and taps the timeline of the video. _ how do you know the footage wasn't in ukraine? it's entirely possible _ that it was some sort of ukraine footage, but it's clear that - somebody is pointing it at a phone and not showing us actual footage of what's happening. _ but i'm alsojust seeing a constant flood of roses, of hearts, - of various emojis that are worth some coin value. _ and those roses can eventually be converted and withdrawn as cash... yes. ..by the live stream host. yes. this live stream had 1.1 million likes. the account has now been taken down. in a statement, tiktok said... 8,000 km away from the epicentre of the war, in west virginia, lindsay has been raising funds for the ukrainian red cross. i actually have two friends in ukraine, so it hits a little closer to home than i would have liked. they're both males in their 30s, so they can't leave. do you want to say hi? hi. i launched the pop—up shop about 48 hours after the initial invasion, you know, in a desperate attempt of, "i need to do something, "i need to keep my hands busy because i'm restless." and then i was able to use my twitter to promote it. then she noticed some suspicious behaviour on her account. i noticed that it was someone who had copied my profile picture and my header and started tweeting like me. and they were soliciting several of my followers for money. lindsay's is one of a number of twitter accounts that have been hacked or cloned by scammers. it was extremely upsetting, you know, notjust being scammed, but it's also trying to discredit someone who's trying to do their best. and it's also taking money away from the people who need it, who are fleeing from war in ukraine. exactly. it's... it also makes other people very wary of, you know, opening their wallets or donating when they can, because theyjust don't want to any more, they don't trust. these war scams have many victims — the people who've unknowingly donated to fake charities, the real charities missing out on the funds they need to do their work, but most of all, the citizens of ukraine, who are in desperate need of aid. it's been another glorious day across most parts of the uk, with temperatures approaching 20 celsius. how about easter sunday? and we have more of the same, more warm sunny spells in the forecast for tomorrow. let's have a look at the short—term, then. and across the bulk of the uk, it is going to be a clear evening and night, but a weatherfront is approaching and we are expecting cloud and rain at least in the west of northern ireland and also in the western isles by early on sunday morning. elsewhere, it is going to be clear with a bit of mist here and there and temperatures typically around 6 or 7 celsius. so here's easter sunday — lots of sunshine across the bulk of the uk, but thicker cloud and outbreaks of rain reaching these westernmost fringes of the british isles. much cooler in belfast, 13 degrees, but still around the high teens or up to 20 in london. and then through the evening, you can see how that weather front approaches and the weather does go downhill across western areas. this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. our top stories: russia warns the us and its allies against supplying further weapons to ukraine — saying it's adding fuel to the conflict. missile attacks resume near kyiv. moscow says it targeted a factory making anti—ship weapons — and threatens more to come. in the past few minutes, the russian defence ministry says it has cleared the entire urban area of mariupol of ukrainian forces, claiming that ukraine has lost more than 4000 fighters in the besieged city — the bbc has not been able to verify these claims russia has banned 13 british politicians, including the prime minister, borisjohnson, from entering the country, in response to uk sanctions. disaster teams in south africa are on high alert for further floods as more rain is expected over the weekend.

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