background
In recent years, some criminals have used new concepts such as "blockchain" and "virtual currency" to illegally make money and commit fraud. Investors should be wary of fraud under the banner of "blockchain" and "virtual currency". Do not blindly believe in the exaggerated promises. They need to establish correct monetary concepts and investment ideas and enhance risk awareness.
In your blockchain experience, you have more or less heard of one of these cases. The victim may be a stranger, an acquaintance, or yourself.
I just searched for "scammer" and "scam" in my chat history, and there were hundreds of related chat records. In order to prevent myself or my friends and relatives from being deceived in the future, I will introduce common scams in several articles, and give corresponding analysis and coping methods.
Please note that the examples given in this article are all collected from my WeChat group.
Write at the beginning
First, everyone is committed to exploring ways to make money in the cryptocurrency world, but many rookies have forgotten how to protect their existing assets first. The methods of protecting wealth in the cryptocurrency world are different from the traditional ones. What you control in your own hands is your wealth, remember.
Second, in the cryptocurrency world, the first source of information is search, and the second is various groups (WeChat, Telegram, Discord, etc.). So for the first point, my advice to everyone is: don’t use Baidu, don’t use Baidu, don’t use Baidu.
The anti-fraud journey begins
According to online information, we can generally divide fraud into the following three categories, and each category has many subcategories.
Traditional fraud
Coin issuance and trading fraud
Phishing scam
Impersonating staff and personnel fraud
An online pyramid scheme disguised as "blockchain"
Online dating and other scams
1.1 Fiat currency transaction fraud
Criminals deceive victims into conducting private transactions through private communication and make payments through WeChat, Alipay, bank cards, etc. After receiving the money, they refuse to transfer the currency or refuse to pay after receiving the currency, in order to achieve the purpose of fraud.
solution:
Don't take anyone who offers to sell you offline on the platform with the bait of cheap prices. Offline transactions can only take place in the following situations:
Both parties are acquaintances and trust each other.
The two parties are not familiar with each other, but there is someone willing to act as a middleman to guarantee (this kind of thing puts a lot of pressure on the middleman, if necessary, remember to send a red envelope to thank the other person)
1.2 Phishing website scams
This type of scam will forge the pages of well-known exchanges, forge the private placement websites of project parties, forge emails and text messages sent by exchanges, etc. Once the user opens the phishing website, they will be asked to enter sensitive information such as account, verification code, and fund password. The scammers use the obtained account information and verification codes to operate accounts, transfer funds, etc., thereby stealing digital assets.
Examples:
This guy downloaded a fake wallet and the 5.5wu was stolen
The following is the loss after installing phishing software on Baidu. The key point is that this account is still deceiving people and can still be found on the Baidu homepage.
There are also many scams on Twitter that use similar letters to change the capitalization.
TG Remember to identify the official one, both uppercase and lowercase letters are correct, for example, Binance: tg Binance official link please identify https://t.me/BinanceChinese
solution:
Remember the following commonly used wallet official websites and download addresses. Any one that does not match is fake. If you are not sure, be sure to find an experienced person to confirm it again and again before downloading, because once downloaded, the coins are basically irrecoverable if they are lost.
imToken official website: https://token.im/
TokenPocket official website: https://www.tokenpocket.pro/
Math Wallet official website: https://mathwallet.org/zh-cn/
Metamask wallet: https://metamask.io/
Onekey hardware wallet: https://onekey.so/
1.3 Impersonating platform staff and personnel fraud
In this type of scam, scammers will contact you (WeChat, QQ, Telegram, phone, etc.) in the name of platform staff (customer service/security center) or personnel.
They ask you to cooperate with security checks on the grounds that your account is at risk of money laundering such as black money/black coins, or that the user's transaction has triggered risk control and there is a risk of funds. The user is required to click on the link sent by the scammer, log in to the account, and fill in the fund password for security verification to remove the account risk/freeze.
They take advantage of your panic to obtain your account information or trick you into withdrawing or transferring money.
Binance is actually pretty normal, but there are always people saying that they can’t be certified, or that they need to be cleared out. They are all scammers, so be careful.
There are too many examples of this. I don’t know how many groups I’ve seen asking about receiving calls from the three major platforms or other exchanges. Does the following conversation look or sound familiar?
Just now, a phone call from Hong Kong asked me if I was myself and said I was from Huobi Security Center. Is that true? Is he a scammer?
Remember: basically, calls from Hong Kong are either from people selling things or scammers.
solution:
The customer service told me that Binance will not call users, which means that the call just now was a scammer. Everyone should pay attention. Basically, every regular exchange APP will state that these exchanges will not call users. If you receive a call claiming to be from XX exchange, just hang up and block it.
1.4 Online pyramid schemes disguised as "blockchain", Ponzi schemes, etc.
Criminals take advantage of new concepts such as "blockchain" and "virtual currency" and, under the guise of "the largest Ponzi scheme in the cryptocurrency world," use blockchain technology and digital currency as a medium of transaction to conduct online pyramid schemes and commit fraud.
Everyone must pay attention. All strangers who recommend you to hold U mining, hold jst mining, hold sun mining, and hold U mining win are all scammers. They may be criminal gangs lurking on the border of Southeast Asia. The dapp they give you is a phishing website. If you authorize their dapp, your wallet assets will belong to them! The assets will be stolen! Remind everyone to be careful! This criminal gang is getting more and more people, lurking in various groups, adding friends privately to get close, and then recommending it to you! Everyone must not participate!
Scam characteristics
Make up stories and design models to attract investors' attention;
Deceptive, tempting, and concealed
Claiming technologies such as "blockchain", "decentralization" and "open source" as the technical structure of their own virtual currency;
The trading platform server is placed overseas, and fraud is carried out within the country and money is counted overseas, in preparation for running away in advance.
Networking and cross-border development are obvious
There are multiple risks of illegality
Let me tell you an interesting story. In order to see how the scammers cheat people, I stayed in Ruziniu’s community for more than a month, watching how they cheated people every day.
Examples:
I have a friend who was pulled into a group by someone like this. There were a lot of shills and scammers in the group. They showed a lot of profits every day, but he ended up being defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Pangu Community
Ruzi Niu
solution:
Generally, the victims of this kind of scam are the elderly, and young people in the cryptocurrency circle are hardly fooled. So you need to pay attention to whether your parents have been fooled.
1.5 Online dating scams
Impersonate or steal a friend’s social account or add WeChat, QQ, Telegram, etc. under the identities of online love, online dating, investment teacher, etc. and pull you into the group.
If you pretend to be a friend, they will ask you to lend you money for reasons such as loan or turnover;
Those who pretend to be investment teachers use high-value inducements (such as "arbitrage by moving bricks", "high rebates", "leading orders", "interest on deposits", etc.), as well as the stimulation of group members constantly posting their profits, to guide users to recharge and defraud funds.
Scam characteristics:
Shouting the slogan: "If you missed the ten thousand times increase of Bitcoin, will you miss the ten thousand times increase of ××× coin? ××× coin, Bitcoin is even more awesome. If you invest in ××× coin, you can quickly achieve financial freedom."
They are usually opened by so-called big names. The charging standards depend on the influence of the "big names", ranging from a few hundred yuan to hundreds of thousands or even millions. After joining the group, they will analyze the market for you every day and teach you how to buy and sell.
"Our project is different from others. We have a famous investor named ×××, who is a blockchain technology expert and well-known in the industry. You can check their information online to see how powerful they are."
solution
Remember there is no free lunch in the world. You are eyeing high returns, while others are eyeing your principal.
Maybe everyone in the group is a liar except you.