Topic: URGENT & BEWARE: Sophisticated Telegram Scammers (Read 1306 times)

Found out why newbie accounts that seemingly get hacked are unable to receive PMs
Apparently whoever got control of their account put a star  *   in their PM block.. hard to see and many new accounts don't know where to look to remove this

Go into "Profile" on the top menu bar
The on the left menu in the "Modify Profile" group, click on "Personal Message Options"
There you can remove the  *

I don’t even know what telegram is. Never used it. This scammer straight-up emailed me to my email account. It’s on my profile here, so that’s probably how he got it.

^ I’m glad you didn’t end up losing any money. Any clue as to how your account became compromised by the attempted scammer in the first place? In my experience, every single time someone has mentioned telegram they have turned out to be a scammer. At this point I try and avoid anyone who ever uses the platform. It’s for the best. Stay away from telegram. There’s literally not a single good thing that will ever come out of using it.

Thought I would chime in and add to this excellent post with something similar that happened to me today. This scammer emailed me with an email address that appeared to be that of MinerJones. I had bid on one of MinerJones’ items on the forum, and the email requested that I either verify my wallet address or leave Bitcoin in escrow before the auction ended. As a new member, the request didn’t surprise me because I know that guys on the forum are very wary of newbies (understandably so). Thinking that the request from MinerJones was reasonable, I gave him only the receive address of my wallet. I then received an email from him where he offered to remove the listing and sell me the item for an agreed price. I found this suspicious, but, optimistically agreed to an amount in the heat of the moment.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I told him that I was going to pm him on the board in order to confirm that the person emailing me is the same person selling the item on the board (the REAL MinerJones). So I PM’d MinerJones. I then received an email from the scammer that showed my pm to MinerJones!!! This made it seem as if he’s the real guy. After all, how else would he get that PM? Unconvinced, I said “please respond via pm on the board.”  I then received a PM FROM MY OWN ACCOUNT to me! I guess that he couldn’t fake a pm from MinerJones, but was able to PM me from my own account. On the pm was the message I’d sent MinerJones and a message from the scammer saying “ok, I’ve replied twice now😊.” Once I realized that the pm came from my own account, my suspicions were confirmed. Unfortunately, it makes me think that maybe my account has been hacked. But fortunately, disaster was averted and the scammers didn’t get a cent. Later, a wonderful board member (Bitbuddy60) called me and connected me to the discord and the real MinerJones. I hope that this unpleasant experience will help others. Now I’m just pissed off that the entire interaction happened while that .25 Lealana sold. I would have bid on it if I weren’t busy dealing with this shit! Anyway, I look forward to dealing with you guys, and I’m really happy to be on this board.

Added.

Maybe @SatsLife can add this link to his pinned thread. Kinda fits in with the theme.

Yeah, tried... mods ignored the request

This post should be made sticky, random people contact me on telegram every time I post an offer, so it should also happen to people who are not aware of this.

Newbies - more than anyone - should take their time to do the research and check profiles. Most of the people that contact me via telegram also ask that I confirm via a dm on the forums that they are speaking to me.

In the end, if you are doing any type of deal there should always be multiple levels of confirmation and verification before you just send crypto/fiat/items

I am from a third world country which has poor education, has hell a lot of scammers and mostly an anti-bitcoin country. If I end up showcasing myself that I deal with bitcoin and collectibles, there are possibilities that I would be questioned by police even before the scammers gets jailed. This is probably one of the reason, I am maintaining an extremely low profile with real life people over here.

AFAIK there are less than 7-8 collectors (including me) from my country and I have personally dealt with one of them on various trades  Also, there are various recent reports of my country's customs seizing hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor and importing ASIC along with mining any kind of altcoins are banned as well. Hence, I am unwilling to risk myself in the process of exposing such scammers to the police.

I would like to shed some light regarding an incident which I faced a few months back in Dec 2020 - Jan 2021. I was contacted by a friend of friend who indeed introduced me to a stranger whom he spoke with and became friends in a crypto related telegram group. The stranger (whom the friend of friend may know in real life too) initiated a chat with me stating that they have a 0.5 btc loaded casascius coins, a few bitcoin pennies, papersafe and polymerbits and was willing to sell them. They indeed asked me to help them with the sale which I was initially hesitant to move forward. Regarding myself, only a very few (less than 5) of my real life people know that I am involved in bitcoin and absolutely none of them know that I used to buy collectibles occasionally.

So I tried to help them and asked a few pictures along with the date and time written on a piece of paper. To the contrary, all the pictures provided were stolen from forum's previous auctions and some were as old as 2011 Bitbills sale from coblee. Once I said them they were trying to scam me, they blocked me and has never contacted my friend of friend as well. 

In this difficult occasion of various scams going all over the collectible market, I am requesting every collectible user who shares their collections in Instagram just like me to make their account Private and accept only collectors who are known to us to prevent further scams. Along with that, let us limit our transactions through Discord/Telegram and as others have suggested we need to pin this topic for the welfare of newbies too.

I would still suggest using signed messages to verify identities - in all cases, you know you're dealing with the same individual with the same keys. Whereas Telegram may lead to impostors, you still aren't necessarily protected from any forum hack: if someone managed to get the details for an account or managed to send out a PM in some manner without having verified their identity, then this shouldn't be a problem as long as you always seek out a signed message before any money is moved.

That makes you an easier target, IMO. They’ll add you to the list. Very few newbies will take the time to reference your profile or signature before closing a “deal.”

The best solution is to not use Telegram outside of conversations with trusted friends.

The next best solution is to use an obscure username only provided to folks in your trusted network so you cannot easily be contacted by scammers.

easy solution - if you use telegram put a link or your telegram handle in your profile/signature

Wonderful world we live in...  

This post should be sticked up !

I also got contacted, so beware !

Some people may not know that certain users on the forum do not use Telegram, or they may not know of their actual Telegram IDs. When transacting with another member, Newbies are much more likely to make a reply and possibly get Telegram-impostor'd (among other services) if they attached their contact information. Moreover, due to the PM restrictions, you're more likely to see those very same new users trade/communicate off-forum. It's a death spiral waiting to happen.

Something else that may happen is that someone will use an impostor escrow and you'll find that they've matched the Telegram information of the original escrow account - someone did this using my credentials in the past.

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If your username is similar across platforms, you can easily be attacked. Unfortunately, not everyone has golden OPSEC and most likely have two or more accounts that share the same username across websites.

I've noticed a ton of classified listings for Bitcointalk accounts with high statuses (merit / trust). For example:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcointalk-accounts-for-sell-very-clean-accounts-5284137

I'm guessing many of these accounts that are for sale are old, hacked accounts with few if any recent legitimate contributions.

Based on this fact alone:

DO NOT assume just because a PM is from a seemingly-trusted account that they can truly be trusted.

I perceive someone's trust based on the quality and frequency of their contributions to the forum, and recent sale history/trust given by members I recognize.

They are very advanced and will, like in your case, pull in an imposter escrow.

Be careful with asking them to PM you a phrase -- I had a scammer convince the person they were posing as to send me the phrase under false pretense.

It's best to not respond to Telegram messages regarding collectibles, or immediately request they "move the conversation to PM."

idk about telegram but discord you can enable dev mode and see accurate user ID, it never changes even when people change tags

Definitely a SCAM --- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/wts-casascius-2011-coin-w-error-funded-5323029

Was contacted by the user(Jay9577) on Telegram to ship the coin right away since he needs funds urgently. I asked him to message me back on the forum with a phrase which he did that proves it is the same person here and on the Telegram. I insisted on using the Escrow or shipping first. He agreed to use MJ eventually to which I send a message to him and MJ. Never heard back on forum messages but few mins later received a message on Telegram from so called minerjones to provide escrow service(Well please be careful guys, I got little confused to this part but later realized the person hid the userID which could have been anything but the screen name was showing exactly as minerjones.

PLEASE PLEASE Do not finalize anything with anyone off forum unless u have chatted with them before and are 100% sure it's the right person that you are making the deal with.

Just posted it in Meta: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/urgent-beware-sophisticated-telegram-scammers-5323874

I believe we need an ongoing thread that highlights the latest scams targeting our members, whether it be this one or a new one.

I posted about this in a similarly related thread in Meta. Asked Hilarious if he thinks it should be pinned. Maybe needs its own post though as mods may not see it.

I also stated on page one this should be pinned in hardware section too, possibly digital goods.

Did you post this in Meta? If not, that’s what you need to do.

I see some Mr Robots in this discussion who can also play their game ..go get em lol

I think that is probably the safest route.

Agreed on the pin — mods must be busy as I haven’t been able to get their attention.

This really grinds my gears, especially after seeing someone getting ripped off in the recent charity auction.

Moral of the story is to not deal on Telegram/Discord or likes unless you know the person and have verified their identity on forum.

Here's a pro-tip to verify someone's identity if you really must deal on Telegram or other channels: Ask them to sign a message using their Bitcoin address or PGP key and send it to you both here on forum as well as Telegram (or whatever other chat or email tool you're using). Make sure that they mention all terms of deal and their telegram handle / email address or whatever other identifier they contacted you with. And ensure that whichever address or pgp they are signing with is a public one and they have staked it here on forum in one way or the other. And don't just trust, verify the message too once they send it to you.

We have got all the tools at our disposal.. stop being lazy and use them.

Or just deal here on forum, build trust, and then move on to Telegram/Discord once the trust is built.

This thread needs to be stickied too.

Not really here... Had one impersonator of a dev for a channel I'm in DM me yesterday, but just blocked and reported him... Just another day in telegramville here I guess.

I'd like to add - I HAVE done some deals on Telegram with newbie members - mostly people from off forum just interested in one certain thing and can't PM me enough on here and are not willing to buy copper membership for a few PM's... Long story short, have met some really cool other people in the space that way, and also some people who just buy one thing then disappear. Never any problems though. And yes, I always ensure its' the same person I'm speaking with from here obviously, otherwise no deal.

Has anyone observed a shift in tactics on the part of the scammers? Are members still receiving reach outs via Telegram?

Changing my Telegram username to something non-guessable resulted in a complete drop-off in communications for me.

Sure did -- haven't heard back yet, but it does seem to make sense.

Did you PM the mods? They are listed above in the top header.... Good idea, thanks!

@Mods, can we pin this as a one-stop discussion about scams targeting members of the forum?

For now, it's Telegram... tomorrow, it may be something else and it'd be good for everyone to have awareness.

That makes sense, people who deal with me know I do not trade anywhere away from the forum (when I am selling on the forum), and I only use forum trusted escrows, I have had such contact asking for telegram contact, and I just ignore from that point, thank you for making this more public and hopefully saving someone some BTC.

Very well written. Thanks for raising awareness!
Z

There’s a few threads out there , this is probably the main one

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.11280

One day I’ll get round to doing it too 

Where does the BTC address need to be posted in order to qualify for the signing?

If the forum account gets hacked, then most likely the hacker will prevent the original user to access it any further.
So, they can change the password, and they can change the email address.

However, these events are recorded in the forum seclog and an orange notice will appear on the user's Trust page.



(There is another different notice if the email has been changed.)

Then, the original owner can retrieve the account by providing the Staff with a message signed by a BTC address that was used on the forum by the user.

Usually, I do not send any address unless it's signed by 1yogg7RkwrSsh1UNi5jw3oUALHBaP4KrX.

You can stake your address or PGP key on the forum and sign messages to confirm your cryptographic identity.

In fact, communicated through PGP-encrypted messages is ideal for truly private communication.

There is no sure fire way of protecting oneself and one another, but there are best practices.

On the topic of account compromises, it would be wise for the forum to require multi-factor authentication. Until then, I’d recommend a very strong and random password not used for other accounts.

But what happens if your forum account gets hacked?

I can confirm this is happening. I bought a coin from Blucephus and afterwards I received an invitation to connect on Telegram in order to discuss more things about collectibles. I thought this was a little weird, but very friendly on Blucephus' part. : ) I didn't connect, but I am not sure I realized this was part of a scam until seeing this post.

So, anyway, the main take away from all this is that Blucephus isn't as nice as a thought he was : ) [obvious joke - blu is a straight up guy]

I will be adding the statement BC posted above to my profile.

Oh shit I missed this!!



How does that have to do with telegram? Don't you know anybody next to you can skim your swipe strip on your debit/cc card without RFID shielding on your actual "pocket" wallet..

Any more details on what happened? That sucks and I know the pain / hassles it causes firsthand lol

[/quote]

well I just added it as scammers have seemed to increase 300% or so the last 10 years. 

I Have an RFID wallet, I only use that card for Gas always at the pump and I know what a skimmer looks like.  I figure the girl who took my card skimmed it. That way she also had access to the three digit code on the back and then wrote it down. I gave that info to the banks fraud division they can do what they want with it. The good news is they cover any unauthorized purchase within 24 hours.

I’ve added the following note to my signature. Perhaps others will follow suit and the warning/reminder will be prevalent across the forum.

I will never discuss the sale of Collectibles on Telegram or any other messaging client outside the forum. Beware of scammers.

I had one message me on telegram trying to get me to buy some coin - I dont recall which but at one point they changed their telegram name to DaveF and then deleted the account.

A scammer posing as Krogoth took it a step further. I asked for verification via PM. They then reached out to Krogoth posing as me asking him to send me a PM. Still didn’t feel right, so I asked for the answer to a riddle Krogoth recently posted. Then they vanished.

Unless a close compadre, seems it’s best to keep communication exclusively on the forum.

i was also contacted last weekend by a telegram scammer pretending to be the user 'blucepheus'
he offered me a 100k btcc roll and a 1 BTC cas coin...
after i told him that i was interested but he should send me a proof/pictures about his btt-account via pm, there was dead silence. but i didn't contact him again and didn't delete him from telegram. one day later he had a new profile picture and the username 'ognasty'...

don't be fooled by the scammers, and in the worst case ask for a proof/pictures about the actual account via forum-pm

I can verify these guys are playing dirty right now!

This needs to be pinned here AND Hardware section!

Picture proofs and asking for forum escrow usually singles these guys out really quick.
This is goin on in discord as well where I've seen users posing as escrow providers.
These scams are going for ticket FOMO items too.
BE VIGILANT !!!

Key privacy points include removing the whole "add by phone number".

Someone brute-forcing phone contacts can easily harvest Telegram users and number connections.

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I would suggest turning everything in the "Privacy and Security" section to Nobody and (if unavailable) My contacts. Unless you are going to constantly network with people publicly, protect your privacy.

One Telegram tool that is useful is @userinfobot: I will sometimes forward messages here to verify users.

also helpful if those that do dealings on telegram put a link to their account in signature - then if someone is contacted by said individual, all you need to do is click the telegram in their profile or signature and if it opens a different convo - then yea the person reaching out to you on telegram is a fraud.

IMO, most people who get scammed on telegram just use the "Default" application settings, which allows anybody to add you to a channel IIRC...

So... TURN THAT SHIT OFF, FFS!!! Take note of ALL your settings, as it's also easy to give out your phone number if you are not careful with contacts and such.

Good luck to all, and cheers!


Oh shit I missed this!!



How does that have to do with telegram? Don't you know anybody next to you can skim your swipe strip on your debit/cc card without RFID shielding on your actual "pocket" wallet..

Any more details on what happened? That sucks and I know the pain / hassles it causes firsthand lol

I suppose this is the Telegram

Telegram is a freeware, cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging software and application service. The service also provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, VoIP, file sharing and several other features. It was initially launched for iOS on 14 August 2013 and Android in October

There are scammers everywhere you have to be on your toes. I went to Major restaurant chain store couple weeks ago to try out something new on their menu. My card would not swipe (Bent)  so I gave her my CC.  By hte time I got home (30 minutes later) there was $1,000 in tennis shoes and a Pandora Bracelet charged to my account lol.  The Bank took care of it  but wow ..  they are everywhere   

Lost of very interesting details to take note of today. 

Pretty sure they did not anticipate getting a mining pool involved to replace transactions

Excellent post! The more BTC rises the more of all types of scams we will see! Good luck and stay safe everyone!

iBHK8

Remember: Bitcoin gives you all the tools you need!

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How to sign a message?!

Operate according to the blockchain principles: verify everything is right before you transact. We do that with past blocks, so why not with users as well?

Most important point in this whole thing. Very good writeup.

All,

Highly-sophisticated (and probably organized) scammers are closely monitoring the Collectibles section and targeting members of this forum via Telegram, and everyone needs to be aware and vigilant.

From what I have observed thus far, these sophisticated scammers fit the following profile:

Scammer Profile

• Use actual names of the forum members they are purporting to be; e.g. they will create a Telegram account with the name "blucepheus" and identify themselves as such
• Reference other items for sale by that individual so as to seem more legitimate; "take a look at my others items also -- here are some pics"
  
• Aware of current auctions and listings in this forum, and conversations that are occurring within each thread; they look for opportunities to "piggy back" off of a conversation so as to seem legitimate
• Well-versed in the terminology we use and processes we employ, such as escrow, in the Collectibles section
• Well-versed in the names and nicknames of our escrows, e.g. they will refer to minerjones as 'MJ'
• Knowledgeable in crypto and can "talk the talk"; they will make smalltalk discussing various types of collectibles and interests so as to build trust and rapport
• May spread the conversation out over multiple days so as not to spook you
• Use a lot of emojis to lighten the conversation and build trust
• Once they receive BTC to the wallet address specified, may instantly vanish and delete the conversation
• Once they are spooked (e.g. you call them out, or inform them you want to move the conversation to PM), will do the same

Members of this forum, newbies especially, are falling victim to these scams on a weekly if not daily basis, and are being scammed out of significant amounts of Bitcoin. The more members that fall for it, the more motivated this group will be to grow in size and in the sophistication of the techniques they employ.

They are ruthless. In fact, they exploited a member of this forum just today out of $1,500 in BTC in a charity auction.

Tips for Protecting Yourself

• Ensure your Telegram username does not match your name on Bitcointalk. It only takes a moment to change your username!
• Don't use Telegram for any communication pertaining to Collectibles transactions. If approached by someone purporting to be a member of this forum, request they contact you via PM
• Use a trusted escrow from this forum, and only communicate with the escrow via PM, not Telegram
• If a deal seems too good to be true, it is
• Do not provide personal identifying information via Telegram, including your real name and/or address
• Validate the identity of the person you are chatting with on Telegram, even if they are not approaching you about an immediate transaction. They may engage in casual conversation over days, weeks or months before finally asking if you'd like to purchase something. You may then find out that they were never who you thought they were
• SLOW DOWN. Do not impulsively send someone BTC. If you look close enough and take time to reflect, there are red flags despite the sophistication of these scammers

And since I know these scammers will be reading this message within the next minute:

F*%$ off. We're smarter than you, and we'll prove it.

Hold your BTC tight, and remain vigilant.

-bc