Crypto scams. How not to fall for them. What to do if you have fallen for one. I made a promise and this is an attempt at keeping it.
5 min read
This post is about crypto scams. How not to fall for them. What to do if you have fallen for one. I made a promise with intentions to keep it. There were money people who commented on my post saying that they have fallen for a scam. Hope this post can help :p
Doubling scam
Scam type 1 is the doubling scam. It turns out many newbies and even hardened veterans have fallen for these scams. The highest amount someone reported on my previous post was 11ETH(worth $33000)! They promptly deleted their comment so I will not be able to reveal their identity.
How does the scam work:-
It’s a YouTube live video with 12-20K viewers. It is most likely a conference where famous people like Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey or Vitalik Buterin or CZ from Binance are present.
Here is a screenshot. Shout out to u/fashion_hunger for the screenshot. Thank you so much!
Looks pretty legit and official, right? CZ himself being present to conduct a giveaway? Well, it’s not. As you can see that they require you to send crypto to their wallet to receive the double amount. It’s a total scam!
How not to fall for it :-
If you visit their website, there are three options. The first is BNB, the second is ETH and the third is BTC. Suppose you choose BTC, it will take you to another page. If you scroll down you’ll see this-
So there are supposedly transactions happening every minute. Well here’s the catch, if you copy the address and search it on blockchain.com you’ll see that there have been only 2 transactions using this address. The website claims that there transactions happening every second, but in reality there are only 2 transactions linked with the wallet. So you can conclude that its a total scam! A little research and a simple tool is enough to conclude that this is totally a scam.
Fake miner/investment
A user reached out to me(unfortunately he had fallen for the scam and lost $230), he shared some websites with me and chose to stay anonymous. Like this one for instance. Pretty legit looking website. Got that google translate option as well.
How does the scam work :-
So supposedly they are running a cloud mining operation. Someone would most likely contact you on platforms like telegram, the scammer posing as someone else. They’ll tell you about how they made money with the mining operation. So you are somewhat convinced and you visit their website. Now the website has multiple “plans” which give different returns and have different minimums and maximums. And all of is just to make the operation seem legit. So you have invested in one of the plan and it shows you that the mining is in progress. When the supposed mining is done, you would obviously try to withdraw your money and here is when the problem starts. They will send you a mail saying that you need to migrate to another plan to withdraw funds, and to migrate to the other plan, you need to pay them more money. So they are just trying to milk you for more. Obviously you would go back to the person who first contacted you with your problem. They’ll say that after migrating they were able to withdraw funds and send a bullshit confirmation like this as proof-
The proof sent by the scammer. Yes, Martha Lopez is a scammer.
I guess by now you have realised that you have fallen for a scam. And did I forget to mention that the user shared almost 4-6 websites, all similar, all claiming to be cloud mining operations. Some claimed that they are based in the UK and are listed as well. As I said, its all copy paste material.
How not to fall for it :-
Well you’ll have to do a little digging. Like in this instance, the scammers website claims that they are based in 80 Bendemeer Road, Singapore and are a listed company in Singapore as well. So I looked up 80 Bendemeer Road, Singapore and found the contact info of the building owners. I contacted them and asked if they have any company named Alphacoins as a tenant. Here is their reply-
No tenant named Alphacoins. It took the owners only 20 minutes to reply.
They have no tenant named as Alphacoins in 80 Bendemeer Road, Singapore. The owners replied to my mail in less than 20 mins. I wrote a professional e- mail, I never thought that I’ll ever need to write a professional e-mail. And here I am doing it for you guys. A little digging can help you uncover their blatant lies and protect your money.
What to do if you have fallen for one? :-
Ok, you have fallen for a scam. What do you do now? The advice I am going to give is not original. It is from another r/CryptoCurrency user I cannot remember(seriously please DM for credit).
The best you can do is inform the authorities and keep a track of your fund, meaning keep a track of where the scammer is transferring your crypto to. When the scammer transfers his crypto to a CEX, you’ll be able to contact the exchange and get that scammer caught. Most exchanges require KYC so there is a chance that authorities are able to retrieve your crypto and identify the scammer(I can’t remember the user who gave this advice, so if you are lurking, please contact me for credit.).
But there is a possibility that you are not able to recover your funds, best you can do in that case is save others by reporting the scammer and their wallet on sites like scam alert or bitcoin abuse. There is a good chance that someone might visit these website’s and search for the address that scammed you and save their money.
Conclusion :-
I really hope this post is able to help you, I know I haven’t covered all the possible scams. There are too many!! And each is more complicated then the other!!! But the 2 I have explained should be enough to give you a idea of what most scams look like and how you can save your funds. Hope this post is able to help 🙂
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