Fraudsters across the European Union are impersonating licensed crypto exchanges and financial regulators to steal funds from users forced to move their accounts following the MiCA compliance deadline.
The scam follows a predictable structure. Users receive official-looking communications telling them their accounts must be migrated to a MiCA-compliant platform. The instructions direct them to fraudulent sites that harvest credentials or request direct fund transfers. Because the underlying reason — MiCA's consolidation of the European crypto market — is real, the pretext lands.
The MiCA framework was designed to clean up a fragmented and fraud-prone industry. The migration period it required has handed a ready-made cover story to the people it was meant to displace. Exchanges that lost their operating licenses under MiCA are the nominal subject of many of the impersonation attempts, with users of those platforms treated as the most reachable targets.
Europol has not yet issued a coordinated public warning. Affected users have largely reported cases to national financial regulators, which means the aggregate scale is not yet visible from any single reporting point.
