This is an in progress thread. Please help me to make it a very informative topic to use it as a reference for the innocent forum users and perhaps the visitors that come from search engines. Let's alert the community and help the users to save their hard earned BTC.
In the journey to this forum I have seen number of people to lose their hard earned BTC. They were trapped by scammers innovative (but dangerous and harmful) ideas and lost money. The scammers come in a cycle with some known methods. Sometimes they are very creative that you will never know that you have chances to get scammed unless you become a victim. In this topic I will try to list some of the methods we already have experienced.
Deposit before withdrawing It mostly happens in gambling section but I have seen people coming up with currency exchange service and try this method.
The trick is very easy. You will see an ANN or service announcement of a new website out of nowhere. You will be given X amount of free BTC to try their website. You will spend those fee BTC and play games in their site. Instantly you will find yourself very lucky. You will make Y times of the X and once you will request a withdrawal they will ask you to deposit Z amount BTC. Once you will contact the support they will give this explanation that the primary deposit is required to verify your account. I have seen people to be trapped and lose their money. Do not send any single satoshi to anyone who will come to you with this method. Stay away, you have been warned.
Example victims or offers:
Stay away from Fake Coinbase giveaway ! (accusation, send btc first)
be aware. exmofit.com scam website (accusation, this time it was a fake exchange)
In progressHelp me to withdraw my BTC (using telegram) Author:
hacker1001101001This is a well known type of scam attempt.
You could get a message on telegram by an unknown user that he is new to crypto and if you are known to it can you please help him in withdrawing his BTC from an exchange ( It would obviously be a fake exchange). Than he would give you his account details and say if you could help he would reward you with some amount of BTC from it. But when you try helping him, and go on the exchange it would ask you to deposit some amount of BTC to make an withdrawal ( Most of the time's it is 0.02 BTC ). The next step you do, and if you help him and send 0.02 BTC for withdrawal, ( The reward you would be getting after helping would surely be more than 0.02 BTC as per the scammer) your funds are just gone to the scammer as the exchange is just a fake one. And boom you are scammed.
Never get into this trap! I have seen many people complaining here being victims of such trick's and I personally have received such weird requests on telegram many times but I was just aware of it so was safe every time and just pissed off the scammer.
Just by a quick look, I found a thread with some proves of such scam attempt, but I am sure one could find more victims here.
Example victims or offers:
Telegram scamming deposit on one exchange (Information. Thanks to
robelneo and hacker1001101001 for the link)
Be careful with https://crypto-trader24.com/. You may be a victim (Victim Sorry
loan.ruiu1 and thanks to hacker1001101001 for the link)
Wallet file with xxx or xxxx amount of BTC The user will claim that he has the wallet file having xxx or xxxx amount of BTC in his hard drive. He can not access it because of xyz reason (most of the times it's forget password), he tried with everything from several years but failed. Now he wants you to have it. He will either offer your to buy the hard drive from you paying a very small amount of BTC or he will give a downloadable URL and ask you to download it.
Two goals here:
If they are saying to sell the hard drive with xxxx amount of BTC then all they want is the asking price. If you pay the BTC then it's gone. Most likely you will never get any packages from the post office.
If they are giving you a downloadable URL then most like this file has malicious contents which eventually will infect your computer to steal your BTC.
Example victims or offers:
Hard drive with 1000+ BTC, totally inaccessible. (offer)
Keep wallet file on the cloud here is mine If someone upload their wallet file in the cloud and give the URL of the file then what would most people do? Well first thing is first, download it and check if there are any Bitcoin. That guy must be a fool who gave the URL of the file. Well, you are wrong!
The scammer telling you to upload your files in the cloud and giving away the URL of his wallet file is just the bait. Once you download the file then most likely you are downloading a malicious file which will eventually infect your system and take away your Bitcoin.
Addition from
PatatasI'd like to add one more method which is very sophisticated and many newbies fall for it. The method goes like "Want someone to test my new product or test my new mixer or test my new bot" with competitive rewards. They ask users to install or download their software for testing and usually, it's a virus or malware which steals bitcoins. It's easy to fall for this especially if you're a non-techy person.
Example victims or offers:
The user has any hidden agenda? (accusation)
Share contains 600 btc wallet.dat (offer)
ArchivedDeposit x get 2x (doublespend) method In this method there will be a third person who will claim that he found this site that works for double spending. He will claim that he deposited x BTC and he was able to withdraw 2x amount of BTC. He will suggest you to try the site and get 2x of the BTC you send to them.
Example victims or offers:
In progressSocial media giveaway promo These kind of scams mostly take place in social media especially in twitter. Scammer will pretend to be the official account or representative from any reputable exchange (mainly Coinbase) and announce a giveaway. This will look so real that some people fall for it. The easy way to spot it is that they will ask for x amount of BTC to deposit first to get the bonus.
This can happen through emailing too. Scammer will simply brand an email with the exchange theme and send it to you.
Example victims or offers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/stay-away-from-fake-coinbase-giveaway-5171640 (informative)
Gain trust of a lender and default loan later The victims are mostly the lenders who have lending service in the forum. User x will ask a very small amount of BTC, they will repay it on time. They will keep doing it several times until they are fully confident that you will trust them with bigger amount. Once they are ready they will request you a bigger amount and once you will give them the money knowing he was loyal to you through out the months, they will never come back to you to repay.
Example victims or offers:
In progressFake/outdated token as collateral (again lenders are at risk) In this method the scammer will use your ignorance. They will ask for a collateral loan from you if you are a lender. Since the loan is backed by a collateral the lender easily accept the request. The scammer send the collateral and the lender send the loan with the hope that the taker will give the money back and take his collateral back. But the lender have no clue that he was just scammed. Once the repayment date will become due and he will contact the client for closing the deal then he will realize the whole thing was a greater trick. The tokens those were sent were outdated and have no value in the market.
Example victims or offers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scam-alert-lost-008-btc-please-stay-safe-4773983 (victim, Courtesy
DarkStar_)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/prospectorspr-scam-accusation-with-fake-collateral-2356685 (victim, Courtesy
DarkStar_)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/fake-erc20-token-2335323 (Was nearly falling for it, Courtesy
magneto)
Lending service or offer from a newbie account Once in a moon you will see a newbie is offering lending service but they will not give you any loan unless you offer any collateral. This is collateral scam. Once you send them the collateral they will never get back to you. I doubt there were many successful scam using this method but it worth mentioning.
Example victims or offers:
In progressBitcoinTalk account sellers using selly.io These people will create a topic and will lock it. They will claim that they have BitcoinTalk accounts and they do not want to use it because of xyz reason. Now they want to sell it. The account information is listed on selly.io website. They will give the purchase link of selly.io. If you deal with them then chances are that after sending your payment you will get some fake information about the account. Since BTC is not reversible, you can not get you money back. So, stay away from any account sellers who is using selly.io URL. Account buy/sell is not something this community wants to see. So, it is wise not to buy any account.
Example victims or offers:
In progressYoBit customer support in social media No I am not marketing for YoBit. I have seen a lot of victims who lost their money because they thought someone from YoBit customer support wanted to help them in the social media especially in twitter.
YoBit is known for their shit level of customer service (My personal case was different though) and scammers take this as an opportunity. There are several accounts in Twitter and Facebook (as far as I know) who claim that they are official YoBit support. They brand their profile with YoBit branding theme but the reality is that they are fake. YoBit never have / does not have any customer support outside their site. Once you logged in in their site, on the top menu you will see
support link. This is the only valid rout to contact with them. Avoid any social media or any other form of contact. You will likely to lose your money.
Example victims or offers:
In progressPaypal for crypto(BTC) This kind of currency exchange offers we often see in the
Currency exchange section. Most of them come from Newbie accounts or very lower ranked accounts. They will claim that they have Paypal and they want to buy BTC. The deal may go very smooth but since Paypal has chargeback feature (is valid for 180days) the scammer can simply write to Paypal for a refund and if they can convince Paypal team then Paypal will take the money away from your account. A better solution is to hold the crypto for 180 days using an escrow perhaps.
Example victims or offers:
In progressFake ICOs ICO business were very lucrative business in 2017/2018 and perhaps it still is a lucrative business but not very easy like it used to be. Now every day we see ICOs are trying to launch their product/service using Fake team, Fake review, plagiarized whitepaper. If you are a regular visitor in the scam accusations board then by now I guess you have seen thousands of this kind of Fake ICOs.
Example victims or offers:
Just scan through the
Scam Accusations board. If I were to bring examples then I may not have space left in this topic.
Send BTC to xyz wallet: [H] X coin [W] BTC This thing came new to my radar. Check this:
[W] BTC [H] XMR $3,600,000 archive Read the topic.
It create doubts but seems legit too. One would consider to send the BTC to the referred wallet thinking it's a legit wallet. Trick is that the user will give you a phishing wallet site and will ask you to create a wallet in there and have the keys safe. They will then send the X coin (which they won't obviously) and once you will receive the X coin then you will be asked to give them the private key of the wallet.
Trick here is that once you will create the new wallet in the phishing site and send the coin as he instructed, possibly he will have some code injected and the BTC will immediately go to his choice of wallet. Scammers are very creative indeed.
Example victims or offers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5178075 (offer)
Fake Bitcoin mixer & fake miner equipment Courtesy:
logfilesOften time Bitcoin users use mixing service to lose the trace of their coins. And scammers take this opportunity to scam users. They create cheap website, rank them in google. People find them from google and step in their trap. Sometimes these sites use fake review to convince their visitors.
Here is a list of scam mixers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-of-bitcoin-mixer-or-tumbler-scamclone-websites-5163858 (Thanks to
logfiles)
Here is a list of both scam and legit mixers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/2023-list-bitcoin-mixers-bitcoin-tumblers-websites-2827109 (thanks to
LeGaulois)
Similar way, there are fake miner equipment service too.
Example victims or offers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scam-satoshiminerscom-aka-minerbrosio-fake-team-profiles-and-photos-5149742 (informative, fake miner equipment)
In progress"money making" gambling scripts Courtesy:
marlborozaOften time you will see users are selling winning methods to cheat gambling websites. Almost all of them turns out to be scam. It work like this: Either they will ask for a partnership (ask you to invest) or they will tell that this made them xxx or yyy amount of money and it's going to do the same for you. Do not fall for this traps
In reality, if someone really find a backdoor they are not going to share it with anyone instead they will make as much as they can for them personally.
Example victims or offers:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/player-edge-gambling-script-for-sale-method-tried-tested-3024009 archive (scam service, thanks to
DarkStar_)
In progressImpersonation Author:
ZicadisThis trick typically works when a new user has the same or a very similar username to an established member. Often these users will wait until the real member and the mark (target) are engaged in a conversation, then throughout this conversation they will message the mark while impersonating the established member for the purposes of scamming them. This is particularly common on Telegram, where people will have the same or very similar descriptions in their profile, but will usually lack a username, or have a very similar username to a person of status, e.g. an admin or renowned bitcointalk individual. This trick most commonly targets those who are unfamiliar with Bitcointalk, since the main distinguishing factor is the activity, post count and merit, which are things newbies might fail to check, instead relying solely on the username.
Example victims or offers:
Suchmoon Impersonator (Don't trade without confirmation from bitcointalk)Bitcoin.com Honorable mentionWell, I thought it worth mentioning. It's the strategy they use to mislead new users in the crypto space. If you visit the bitcoin.com website, you will notice that they are using the brand image of Bitcoin but pushing the visitors to buy their bCash shitcoin. Great example is the domain name itself (Bitcoin.com). Every now and then we see users are confused and writing in the forum that they wanted to buy Bitcoin but they end up buying Bitcoin Cash (shitcoin). In other words they thought they were buying Bitcoin but they bought Bitcoin Cash (shitcoin)
Example victims or offers:
In progress
I hope you never get scammed but unfortunately if you ever got scammed then please free free to share your experience, how it happened. Also please help me to list any method that you think I missed.
