Topic: Seeing is no longer believing (Read 388 times)

That is why people need to be very careful the way they relate to strangers in the Internet, because many people have lost big money to scammers easily because they thought they are into business with real people not knowing that they are scammers.

Some scammers use videos call to deceive some people in this forum, because you will believe that  the person is a white man or black man through the video call and he or she will present somethings that will make you to believe that he or she is real investors which is the strategy they use to scam money from people.

I guess newbies will learn lesson from this incident, because they like to relate to strange people on social media and start giving them some information that will make the scammers to deceive them.

Normally we are ment to be aware that scammers are everywhere in the internet now and they are using some many strategy to hack people's funds, and most of us here are always falling victims for them which is very wrong, sometimes I used to wonder why most people's are always in a hurry in something that they didn't do research for, more especially when comes to something like investment they'll just quickly jump in conclusion that is a Genuine business without noing that is a scam.

It doesn't sound good any longer, the way people are being scammed in the crypto space in different means via crypto investment.

Some of us may think that we know it all in crypto while we know nothing compared to what these scammers know. It's like each passing day, these scammers are strategizing ways to appear real to us. They know what we want to hear or see before we believe them to be real. So they are upping their game to make sure they get us convinced since we can't get them physically.

To beat them in that aspect, we should up our games also, not believe or accept fully what we are been told about a given project.

Scams involving deep fake videos are on the rise these days and we keep hearing how people are using deep fake videos of famous people and tricking others.
Lots of people are losing thousands of dollars every day because of deep fake videos. The cons of AI are rising and there is no solution to this yet.
Lack of awareness about AI is the cause of this and people need to be aware of it so that they can avoid getting scammed.

if you've not had experience with these scammers you would assume that anyone that falls victim to thier tactics isn't wise at all. I once thought that it's impossible for these local scammers that calls you to send your bank details to them that they want to rectify a challenge you're facing in the bank to convince me to sendy details. When it finally happened, it was after I had sent them by BVN and all my banks details that I realized myself. When it comes to getting involved with dubious people, ray never to get involved with them cause you can't tell what the outcome will look like.

Like he rightly said, the scammers took the man's image from there handle and where able to manipulate it such that it appears as though he was talking to the main person. In this kind of instance, it's actually deficult for you to dictate if you're talking to the real person or not expecially when you're desperate to seal the dea. Some scammers use a combination of technological means and spiritual means to catch there victim and that's possibly what played out in this case.

I will repeat it again, when it comes to dealing with criminals, you can't be too careful with them. You just pray you don't get entangled with them or else you discover that you aren't all that smart after all.

Deepfake this ha been used in all sort of scams and unwanted stuffs be it create fake mms of celebrities or be it spreading false news pretending as politicians or billionaire. I think we need to be very carefully nowadays and shouldn't believe any what we see as well until it's through official channel as technology has been used more for destructive purpose than creative purpose.

We just have to do what's necessary and right if we want to stay in the system. Scamming is real and I'm also a victim though the incident happen long time ago when I was still a newbie in the space, having no solid knowledge on the basis, I was still seeing the system as complex sector for one to strive but today, I can easily spot out scamming projects and also urged the newbies to take extreme caution because it's among the criteria to stay safe.

I agree with all that said and while his friends admits to be careful at other times, let also, those who aren't aware that such scamming process exists should take concious note having the Ops story as a lesson.

Absolutely, it is quite easy to spot a scam like this if you just take out your time to think about things critically and forget about the enormous gain/profit you stand to gain. A simple question like "why would the CEO and the board call me personally to give me a private deal, in order for me to earn more", if you think about it this way, it is clear it is a scam.

It is easy to scam people when they are greedy and only think about what they are about to gain, and not if the offer is too good to be true.

I concur with you Op. There're several AI apparatus which these scammers uses to subue victims and solemnly make them believe that the communication connections between them are real by high contrast of visual video communications as that Op has narrated.
Scammers has come to an extend to understand that once a victim is desperate about a goal and the scammers proofs that visual evidence by video calls, they may have freezed the doubt side of the victim.
With my research via how much I've heard lot of crypto investors falling on such victims, I was able to find out that ManyCam is one of the AI App as tool to carry on such illegal activities of fake video calls. I'm still in the research for more.

But yet, let's not be easily convinced that visuality is a sponsorship to legitimacy. Also be aware that there're face to face scammers that tend to fraud you without your knowledge. It could happen magically before you could realize it
The safe guard from being victimized with your crypto assets is Taking greeds off your budget.

How does this sound to you, I just think your friend was being ignorant and the Idea of him investing into his favourite project made him become very vulnerable. How can he think they were real when we have AI all over everything on the internet. Does he know the voice of the founder to use that to make his judgement. If a project is looking for funding, they go to VC and not ordinary people on the internet and when they want investment from the public they do a crowdfunding through ICO or IEO. Your friend should have gotten the hit that they're scammers from the movement they contacted him directly because that's how scammers operate but when we want to be stupid, our reasoning leaves our body so I won't blame him much but just his enthusiasm to make good investments.


If it's too good to be true than it usually is, you do not need to ask all those questions, just ignore them when you get contact from them. Unless you're a public figure yourself just know nobody legit is contacting you for investment. Scammers target vulnerable people to try to steal money from.them and it's quite unfortunate that they still get success from this old trick and that's because people have failed to stay enlighten or they'll easily identify all this tricks.

Out of nowhere my favorite Cryptocurrency project CEO video calls me to tell me I have been chosen to invest at lower rate.  Sure.

Who the hell believes this.  Deep Fake technology has been existent in a while around the Cryptocurrency Scams area.  But no matter how deep they are faked, you can STILL see something being wrong about it.  You can reproduce the voice but not perfectly.  Same thing about the face.  Even if you perfectly copied the two, you would need to have the same attitude, personality and choice of words the CEO has to fool some body.

It is easy to fool some body naive or who acts out of greed with zero critical thinking.  You do not even need Deep Fakes for that.

This story is actually not new, nowadays scammers uses artificial intelligence and manipulate in such a way that if one is not careful enough you will eventually fall victim. Everything is possible with technology so we should be aware and alert someone is tells you something that has to do with investing certain amount of money or probably telling you of any program to make money from online, do not be carried away by that rather carry out your research concerning that program to gather enough evidence about the reality of that activity to avoid being scammed. Curiosity kills a man.

Trust the be told that, the issue of scam can’t be easily over emphasized as I think these criminals are always updated and working tirelessly to devour their preys and that’s why, we must always strive very hard never to be their prey because they will devour you really hard with a single pity or mercy.
 
 A lot Is actually going on with the issue of scams online and there are several techniques used by this criminals and that’s already making it hard to cleanse the cyber space of these scams and there is also the best popular love scam and we should try very hard to stay watchful in the internet and always remember to treat everyone online as a suspect and to always stay very conscious.


I’m not sure if the story was intended for you to believe but I believe that op was only trying to create some sort of awareness in the forum and getting the community aware of the possibility of getting scammed through some fake video calls.
It is also worth mentioning that no one is above scam and just incase you missed, a higher my reputable CM @Ab de ROYSE77 was scammed of recent despite having very good knowledge of crypto and his case was also similar to that of the OP. Stop arguing stories and start learning the lessons.

I'm finding it hard to believe this story because the person in question has worked with different start-up crypto projects, and he knows the risks involved and how scammers are looking for someone to deceive. The number one rule in telegram is not to believe anyone who messages you first, claiming he is the admin of a crypto telegram group or a team member of a crypto project. That one alone is a red flag because they just want to sweet talk you and scam you with your hard-earned money. Your friend would have quickly rushed to the telegram group of the said start-up crypto project to know if what they told him was true or check their official X account to see if there was any ongoing token sale, but he chose to send $18k without DYOR.

There’s nothing the scammers can not do just to make sure they took away what people have worked for and that is why I always fear and always make sure I don’t fall in their traps, scammers can do anything by getting every detail of what will make you cooperate with them, about the story of your friend, I will not say he is the one to blame for everything, no matter how smart you are when the scammers are ready to scam you they can do anything unless god saves you and don’t make you fall into their trap, the video call they did with him was the one that convinced him and I believe anyone can fall for it because a video call where someone is communicating with you means like real.

Sometimes we have to admit that no one is perfect and it can happen to anyone when it comes to losing something, we fall into scammers' traps, and sometimes we make mistakes, but we have to be careful and also ask whenever we hear about something that we can benefit from or any investment that we can achieve something from, some investment are good investments but the scammers make us hate them so please let learn a lesson every day with what happens to people and be careful with what we do.

Not all calls have to be someone they need to onboard. There are calls that are dedicated for the investors and potential partners.

There are appointments that are given to the potential investors and that's why they are having this kind of treatment. And the legitimate ones will really have to take you with their time to view them through a call before an actual meet up or so.

Actually, we have to blame the scammers and protect the ignorants. But with this modern technologies, they're taking advantage of the negligence of those people that are misinformed and uninformed about their tactics.

If CEOs and his team members will have a webinar call with you then you must be a developer, someone they are planning to have on the team or maybe you are a popular streamer and they want to talk about their projects and their updates so far.

These are reasonable, but it makes no sense for the CEO and his team member to have you on video live as an investor trying to confuse you to buy their tokens, even if this is real it is stupid, because it is either the project is not doing well or they lack good funding, it is better to avoid it anyways, but most importantly they are always scams.

I don't blame scammers, I blame the newer technology, because they made them available to everybody, both the evil ones and the good ones, there is no way this won't happen, the better the innovation is the more useful it will likely be for bad people.

This is one consequences of emerging technology since those criminals will finds a way on how they can take advantage with this since it also make their job more easier. That's why for us who play fair in life we must know that there's a lot of attempt would provably came that's why it always good to do our due diligence when receiving something unusual to us so we can avoid those any possibilities to fall as victim of their schemes.

Its more better to spend time researching than wasting our time to find on where to go to help us regarding on what we experience. So right now people should educate their selves towards a lot of scam things that currently happen and most important of all is they should not entertain anything that starts with something to good to be true to them.

We thought that AI was a helping tool to the community but sadly, it is a tool for scams now. The more we develop new technologies, the more we are prone to such things, and the more we become careful about our actions. It is a very tricky situation now and we too hard to determine if you are talking to a real person or a fake one (AI).
Scammers are really smart, they take advantage of the current technologies which we can feel no safe and no excuse for scamming activities. That is right, we take time to decide and be cautious about our actions especially when talking to strangers.

To be honest, these CEOs if they will have a webinar or going to take a call for someone who's a potential investor, they're going to do it with a group video call or with a scheduled one not just with them having someone on their back but also with other potential investors that they're selling their token/coin. There is also deep fake, an AI that's able to copy the face of the person they're imitating. This is rampant now and if it's about these messaging apps, I am already taking notice to them that I should be careful and always notice a red flag and don't trust anyone on the web quickly that you have just talked to. Anyone can pretend to be someone.

I agree with you. The internet have make things very easier, and at the same times things get difficult because how things have been done through internet is not really favoring many individuals. people easily get scammed through internet, though by meeting them by their physical appearance it will be better since you will know each other, and by then you all believe with what have been discussed through online. although you can also believe with someone through online is just that scammers are too much and this make us think everyone is the same which is not. If we can meet someone maybe by their profession which is what they do, I think things may go successful too. Because I have seen many businesses who went successfully and they meet online.

I have previously published about this matter, and in fact, deep fake technologies can be closer to reality and easily used by scammers to deceive investors and traders. These techniques can be misused to wrongly mimic the voices and personal characteristics of any prominent figure in this field by ultra-realistic quality.

The fraud will likely be believed by the victims after making a video call or receiving a video or audio clip.. etc., from one of these fraudsters who hide behind their impersonation of well-known personalities and project owners. Look at the statistics of those defrauded through deepfake technology. You will find many stories from individuals and customer service departments of companies that have fallen victim to these innovative methods. Therefore, every person must not believe everything he sees or hears and conduct his own research instead of rushing and completely trusting anyone with some of this false evidence because sometimes their eyes and ears may not show them the truth of things clearly.

This post is yet another testament to the challenges that accompanies every great innovation. Without mincing words, AI will be another big threat, similar to terrorism if care is not taken. With the surge in the development of AI services, scammers are on rampage looking for who to destroy. We just have to be careful.

I know that AI have shifted the bar in the technological space but I never knew it will be possible to be in a virtual meeting with AI generated humans posing as real people without being detected. I will not blame the victim much because he is oblivious of such development else he would have made effort to confirm if they were actually real or fake. There should be a way to outsmart the computer. I will encourage him to take this as the price he paid to be wise because he obviously ignored wisdom and allowed greed cajole him into investing his fortune into the air, I mean a new project he knows nothing about just because some nicely dressed men happens to put words together into a piece of paper called whitepaper (white elephant in reality). I may appear harsh but it is just an expression of how I feel as someone that have fallen victim of such schemes before. Let him count his loss and move on after all, "what does not kill a man, simply makes him stronger"

Since any online business is risky and should be traded with caution, your business partners should be prepared to complete any task you assign them. Although it all depends on your intelligence, if you haven't met the person and want to engage in a video call, all you have to do is observe and let the person move around and perform your task in order to gain trust. Everyone needs to be aware of their surroundings in this day.

Once you begin to tell me stories that are too good to be true on social media, I will begin to suspect you immediately especially on telegram.
I found out that no matter the sensitization people have been making concerning scammers on the internet, vulnerable people are still falling for them, maybe there is need to do more sensitization or awareness program to people on the internet about who they do business with. Most scammers have mastered the act of approaching you with a company and telling you that this is the CEO of the company talking to you directly, some come with mouth watering offers that if you're not careful you can barely resist the temptation of rejection their offer.

For your friend, this is more like an experience to him, at least he can educate others about the need to be careful on the internet, but then it's really a sad one for him, $18k is a lot of money.

It's unfortunate that the young guy lost such a lot of money. With the way internet scammers are everywhere, one should be careful, especially the ones trading online. Don't be too curious, and always ask questions. 
 
When there's information about some program, I believe there are people who will also know about it, so when you get this message, one should try as much as possible to get more information about it through someone else.

Something happened to me years ago. I was with a friend, and I got a call from an unknown number, requesting some information. With so much profit in my eagle, it came so exciting even without me knowing the contact, but at the same time I turned to my friend and told him about it. Immediately, he shouted and asked me to block the contact, saying that they would call me back and tell me some stuff, which I was curious to know, but he told me some after an argument.

 Do you think I should block them immediately? No, I never did. I kept the contact, and when they called back, the same thing he told me happened, and I immediately believed my friend and blocked them.

 What I'm saying is this: assuming I never spoke up that day, I would have become a victim. So we all should try to tell someone before going into an online investment. They might have experienced it or know someone who has or even has information about it.

This is threatening for all of us. This shows that we need to make the security of whatever we have tighter and we need to stay away from every single person that we don't know who are approaching us through the internet, and even if they are impersonating someone we know, we need to make sure that we are verifying that it is actually them before we share any information, and we should never exchange finances with anyone online that we are not 100% sure is someone we know.

Scammers are getting very smart, and this is a classic example of that. I can't imagine someone tricking me into sending them so much money like this, using an AI-generated video and a voiceover, they are gone too far, and we need to become more aware from now on.

Don't get easily convinced by people you meet and interact with, some of them were on a mission to know your vulnerability and use such in setting up their attack, i will also give this warning that we need to be careful on the kind of crypto groups which we belong, if we are not familiar with many of the members on that same group, then we should find a means of exit from the group except we are sure of being on the right and official group page of the intended platform, scammers are impersonating now.

Sorry for his lost, that is a huge sum of money to loss at this period. One thing we should always know is that it is not always good to rely on just your own knowledge or feeling too over confident of yourself. Ask questions on things you don't know, research and don't be in a haste to invest in anything because of somebody or greed.


These scammers are so desperate that they can go to any length to achieve their goal, they update themselves on different methods and technologies and even applications can look too real to be false just to achieve what they want.
Even as we research and ask questions on how to identify scammers, we still need to be careful and watchful on deals we sign or platforms we invest.

Scamming is becoming too real this days and this why people need not to be fast in making deal with people they don't know, be it your favourite crypto influncer or CEO of an exchange. So far as you are online see everyone as a suspect to scam because everyone you are coming in contact with online are strangers which you don't know them very well, you can not tell what is on their mind. This days making a video call as a proof of talking with the right person is not real again because scammer fake it. The best way not to go into the hands of scammers is to be slow and reason very well, ask questions to know things better.

 Scammers are very smart and they try to learn new scamming techniques to get people every day. As scammers are getting smart in their activities we also needs to be smart too when we found ourselves in the online environment because we are dealing with strangers. As the world is becoming more digital that is also how scam is increasing too because scammers know this is how they can get people too as everything is becoming digitalise .

What you don't know is greater than you, people normally believe something when they hear from the source, like they say, to hear from the horse's mouth, now that hearing from the source can be a scam, it's a reason for people to become more informed about online activities. People should not give room for total trust online, even when it seams very real that you're dealing with the right source or people, because technology that was created to add value to our lives have been hijacked by criminals to scam unsuspecting people.

There's a video that is circulating in my country where Joe Biden, was criticizing the president of Nigeria, many people were shocked at the words that Biden, said, but people who knows are telling people that the video is fake. I don't even know what to believe again, I've seen in movies where people will use artificial faces to impersonate other people, some will even clone voices, this is a crazy generation, will need to be a step ahead of these scammers in order not to be scammed.

This is the first thing to do, and that's what I've been doing. It clears every doubt. We've all been victims one way or the other on various projects and we learnt from such experiences. I still won't blame the victim in your narrative. Scammers are very smart and they put in hardwork into their craft. Most of these scammers are developers and project members and they know the loopholes and how to make shortcuts around them.

For me, a few private sales I've been involved in were from insiders in the projects. I made so much mistakes in the past during the ICO days of 2017/18 that I lost interest in anything private sales. I'm building the interest again but it must be through reputable people I know who are insiders before I invest in any project this day. Sometimes we want to lose our guards in private sales because of the mouth watering ROI and then throw caution to the wind and not be guarded by our investment principles. We shouldn't do that. We ought to stick to whatever scrutiny parameters we use.

Apart from being watchful this period, everyone needs to pay attention that this particular period is a very sensitive one and as scammers all hyperactive because they know people and investors that are craving for quick project will be urging to just hear some good proposal that will ring off their ears so they can gear up and make investment but the facts is that whenever the promise is getting too good its actually a fake and immediately zoom out but some persons will still fall because of their greed and that's why it's important to understand that this period is a sensitive one as scammers will be everywhere looking for victims base on the coming bull market.

Thats too bad. Even some tools have been used to fake out video call too. I think these scammers are way off limits. I am not suprise why the SEC are really giving crypto a hard time, they wanna cracked down some of these mfers. Newbie and users are the one being affected in the crossfire and become targeted by these people. Greed really is one thing to say about these people who doesnt get scared of doing such modus.

This is unfortunate, however, knowing how technology is advancing, especially artificial intelligence, we should be more vigilant and shouldn't believe things as easily as we used to do before. We often see AI-generated voiceovers in TikTok or other video-uploading platforms where they make AI create different songs of certain singers in the voice of other singers, and you can barely realize that it is AI-generated except for some parts where it can be identified but only if someone has listened to that particular singer closely.

So basically this is just the beginning, and there will be more scams and things like these because AI is advancing and scammers are also becoming smarter day by day, so we need to make sure that we are always careful about who we are talking to and who is texting or calling us, especially when finances are involved.

The internet is filled with scammers but few are just genuine, so we should know that even when you see someone on video call you shouldn't conclude that they are real because there are more then enough tools that scammers can use to make video calls and you the person they are planning to scam will see them as the legit people. Although, this season $18k is not a small amount that one should lose and still feel alright but your friend should put in conner of his mind that the crypto world is very large and he should also be very careful next time.

Which is technically possible but it is not going to be realistic unless all those videos were prerecorded because to process one deep fake video of few second will need few minutes if your hardware is on high end so imagine processing 5 videos on real time that would require pool of graphic resource like a mining pool to get the result that you expect and it won't be same as realistic.

But scammers orchestrate things perfectly and that's how they are pulling money from users, so it is important to be careful and sensible as well.

With how modern technology most especially the use of AI how modified human activities such that we cannot differentiate between what is real human and what is being done by an AI so it is just advisable to make sure that if you want a serious discussion with anyone online then after going through some agreements you need to get physical with such person that is the only wly to avoid being scammed if not am afraid that modern technology might end human existence simply because they can almost do everything human does.

I totally agree with you. It is surprising how many people get tricked by deepfake scams even though we have seen it happen before. Latest case where someone lost $18,000 is reminder that we need to be careful. When investing or working on any project it is important to have multiple people involved so we can catch any potential problems. Scammers are smart but they use their skills for bad things. We need to stay informed share information and look out for each other to avoid getting scammed. Losing money we have worked hard for is terrible and we need to work together to prevent it from happening. If any one get scammed so he should share his story to others so others will be careful about these things.

Someone who is into project stuff like that should pay attention to how scammers operate because they will definitely be coming for them as they are major targets.
 
Just a few weeks ago, manager Royse posted about how some scammers are impersonating some of his clients, not even through video calls but just via normal chat, and it fucking looks very real.
 
If that victim guy was able to keep them on the video call for a long period of time, at least 5 minutes and above, he could have been able to detect some errors and notice that it was all fake.
 
Another thing about all these fake video call tools is that the scammer needs to be the one to call before most of the apps will be able to do what they set them to display. If you call them back, they don't pick up because the tools are not programmed to work that way.

Getting into a video call conversation with someone who you can't call but who can only call you is enough of a of a red flag for someone to notice that something is wrong.

So sad that a hardworking dude would lose such a massive amount to scammers.

We keep talking about carrying out research before doing any transaction related matters on the internet, do you think research is enough?.
I guess you've not heard of the uniswap scam that happened sometime last year. It left me in shock as I could vividly see the level scam has gotten to. Just carrying out research could still land anyone in that Uniswap scam. The X(Twitter) account of uniswap CEO was hacked, fake convention was organized to promote the project, fake uniswap website, and you think carrying out research is enough  .

As long as money still exist, scammers would definitely find ways to hack into the minds of people. I do not discourage research, but it's high time we start to accept the fact that whatever transaction we perform with anyone we can't maintain a physical contact with is clearly a 50/50 success. Having the 50/50 success at the back of our mind reduce the massive disappointment when things go wrong. And also, no one can force you to make transaction, except their tactics was convincing enough.

Let's just say, Carrying research and having a 50/50 success chance at the back of your mind would help.

Links below shows convention and moment the account was hacked.

https://twitter.com/yourfriendSOMMI/status/1664909907731292160?t=6AnrH7UQUvYjb_oBkn84ig&s=19

https://twitter.com/Uniswap/status/1682130018225225728?t=6KoOfCZnh-SzLiDBBuEp1A&s=19

This isn't my first time of hearing about this deepfake tools used to scam people but at some point this people are so naive to fall victim of this scams at least no matter how real a project seems for a good amount like $18k which the victim lost, he should at least involve more than one person to help out on the project at one of two would have suspected and faults would have been found oj thr process but because he or she was convinced of the selfish profit he fall for the scam.

One thing is certain scammers are not dumb they are part of the smartest people in the world but chose to use it in a negative way. So as you said we all have to be on guide, updating each other on what ever is happening around the space not to fall victim of any scam because it hurts to loss ones hard earn money.

Imagine being on a video call and everyone interacting with you are fake?


At first I don't believe this until later on, a guy from my local Crypto WhatsApp group lost close to 18k in dollars to scammers, this is a guy who have been a victim of some past scams and jave learned from it all, thinking he has passed been scammed until now.

He is into startup projects just like I am, using Seedify, Decubate, Ape terminal and others, he is an investor of a newly launched project who have raised some money and they are planning their second fundraising, the team came for him, and to confuse him they use video.

Imagine talking to the CEO of a favorite crypto project that you liked, including two extra team members on video call, and they managed to confuse you that they are picking few numbers of people to invest into the second seed round at a cheaper rate per token?  They got him good, he was too excited and all sense of curiosity was shut down.

Before he knew what was happening he lost everything and accused the team on telegram group only to find out that none offer existed and all seed rounds are already completed.

The scammers went online and download the pictures of the company, including every staff members, everything they can get and used Artificial intelligence to create fake videos and with fake voices they will use in the video call, I went on doing my own research amd ended up with Deep fake technologies.

Read more about deep fake technologies 👇


https://www.idenfy.com/blog/deepfake-technology/amp/

Be on the look out guys, anytime you found any CEOs or notable people online telling you to do something or sending some transactions, please do not rush, take a minute, relax and do some research first or just look away.

If you are curious, find the projects telegram group and ask questions, and post screenshots on the group, I am positive that people will stop you from getting scammed, they will be exposed to you that you are about to get scammed, sadly we have gotten to this stage only to end up having more confusing tools for scammers, all we can do is warn each other of the threats that lurk