Wall of Shame
This is a Wall of shame for all the crypto scums that circulate free and unregulated on the world wide web.
In today’s digital era, your cryptocurrency is an incredibly attractive asset to criminals. It’s liquid, highly portable and, once a transaction has been made, it’s almost impossible to revert it. As a result, a wave of scams (both decades-old classics and cryptocurrency-specific swindles) has flooded the digital realm of blockchain.
The most common cryptocurrency scam practises are the following:
1. Social Media Giveaway Scams
2. Pyramid and Ponzi schemes
3. Fake Mobile Apps
4. Phishing
5. Vested Interests
Malicious actors and hackers have no shortage of techniques for stealing and siphoning funds not from the rich people but from ordinary hardworking middle-class cryptocurrency people who are struggling to have some comfort in their life and earn an extra crypto income. To steer clear of the most common scams, people need to remain constantly vigilant and aware of the schemes used by these parties. Always check that you’re using official websites/applications, and remember: if an investment or a service sounds too good to be true, probably it is a scam.
More information can be found on Binance Academy relevant article.
In today’s digital era, your cryptocurrency is an incredibly attractive asset to criminals. It’s liquid, highly portable and, once a transaction has been made, it’s almost impossible to revert it. As a result, a wave of scams (both decades-old classics and cryptocurrency-specific swindles) has flooded the digital realm of blockchain.
The most common cryptocurrency scam practises are the following:
1. Social Media Giveaway Scams
2. Pyramid and Ponzi schemes
3. Fake Mobile Apps
4. Phishing
5. Vested Interests
Malicious actors and hackers have no shortage of techniques for stealing and siphoning funds not from the rich people but from ordinary hardworking middle-class cryptocurrency people who are struggling to have some comfort in their life and earn an extra crypto income. To steer clear of the most common scams, people need to remain constantly vigilant and aware of the schemes used by these parties. Always check that you’re using official websites/applications, and remember: if an investment or a service sounds too good to be true, probably it is a scam.
More information can be found on Binance Academy relevant article.
The Case of BINANCEDROP.US
Verdict: Scam Total Loss: 0.06614129 BTC
I joined the site binancedrop.us through a telegram channel mocking binance dex service having a fake 6.000 BTC Airdrop and asking me to send them my bitcoin funds, promising that they would return them double through the binance dex fake “airdrop”. I wouldn’t believe them but their telegram channel was full of bots with fake users reassuring me that it was true through personal messages and even in their website, they had embedded an official Binance Dex video about the launching of their service. But due to my FOMO of losing the airdrop, I decided to give them a try and i withdrew my 0.06614129 bitcoins in their shared address 1MLVs6A6YFQZkQxYt9y8994MR5sYCDANGa in order to receive their “airdrop” but as soon the bitcoins were delivered, both the channel and the site disappeared.
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My funds were available in their shared address according to https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1MLVs6A6YFQZkQxYt9y8994MR5sYCDANGa but it appears that they forwarded them into another address bc1q4m7f7j3ypkxe6j3nkzewkqh7rgla9msrn2r2sg according to https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/bc1q4m7f7j3ypkxe6j3nkzewkqh7rgla9msrn2r2sg so i couldn't recover them anymore.
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i tried to contact Binance Customer Support but it wasn't even willing to respond to my submitted ticket (4545344) or provide any compensation as the scammers used illegally Binance Dex logo, trademark, launched videos and intellectual property. Their customer support service is awful because they provide no support since the Bitcoin service isn't regulated.
Later Chrome browser identified the website as dangerous and deceptive before it was completely removed from the world wide web. What i hate about hackers is that they target hard working middle class crypto users instead of hunting down the rich people. Or is it too difficult to scam rich people ? Relevant Article: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-recovers-344k-from-defi-exit-scam-that-launched-on-its-platform |
Verdict: Scam Total Loss: 10 minutes from my time
The case of Mining Birds
The Case of Trust Wallet Rewards
When Trust Wallet started launching various successful and popular airdrops through its twitter account @TrustWalletApp, a team of scammers under the name of Trust Wallet Rewards tried to mimic their promotional campaigns by sending a message to its followers that they were a winner of one of Trust Wallet Airdrops.
Once the user had clicked the bit.ly link which wasn't an actually scum otherwise it would have been blocked by twitter, the user would have been redirected to another website asking to click to another url in order to receive an airdrop. A quick visit to the official Trust Wallet twitter account @TrustWalletApp would uncover the scum. People can easily get fooled from the easiness of earning cryptos through airdrops and they just obey the airdrop instructions without hesitation and clear mind. Stay Alert. Use Airdrops through official accounts only. |
Scum Trust - Wallet Rewards @WalletAirdops
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Official Trust Crypto Wallet account @TrustWalletApp
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The Case of Free-Tether.com
Verdict: Scam Total Loss: 10 USDT
Free-Tether.com is an ERC-20 USDT faucet established on 2020 that has so many similarities with the successful FreeBitco.in that it looks like a direct clone of it focusing in ERC-20 USDT cryptocurrency instead of Bitcoin. Users can also earn an 8% interest for HODLing their profits in the website. There is a minimum Payout is 15 USDT and there is a Network fee of 5 USDT. As a result, the user is encouraged to accumulate a bigger amount i.e 20 USDT to receive a considerable profit. The minimum claiming period is one hour. The referral program of Free-Tether.com provides users with 10% of their referral earnings from the faucet for life. Other tasks include Multiply and Lottery games. I had only managed to accumulate just 0.2405 USDT when it was announced that the FREE FAUCET section will be locked unless there is a deposit of 2 USDT which now it is 10 USDT to unlock it.
After being inactive for 1 month, I decided to invest 10 - 4 (ERC20 gas commission = 6 USDT) which is the minimum amount that can be withdrawn from Binance to the deposit address of my account in Free-Tether.com (0x816A900d4863E0ef218142ae8e9bA89726411d4A) in order to unlock the "free" faucet section. Normally a true fauceteer wouldn't have been trapped into temptation to deposit any amount in order to have a free faucet section unlocked. FreeBit.co operates in a similar way allowing users to accumulate interest if they will keep at least 30,000 Satoshi in their account no matter if this amounts comes from the free faucet, earnings from the competitions or from a user's deposit. However, after an initial period of 4 days in which I managed to gather 0.24045 USDT, the free-tether.com didn't allow me to earn any more USDT unless I would deposit 2 USDT.
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The same information can be spotted in the Blockchain Explorer by quoting the transaction id (txid) 0xf8767a73f8f580d82ebc474004175b91954a677c1849881e494dbda45e4c8242
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It is even more remarkable that several other scammed users hane deposited funds to the same address and the owner withdrew 18.017 USDT to the address 0xD8A03b6Dbc44868E640E82A45B96CA4362b2e686 (where the owner collects all the funds from the scammed addreses) without providing the relevant funds to the depositors.