They are everywhere. In all Slacks, in almost every topic of Bitcointalk, Reddit and several other sites. They are always looking for new targets, most of them beginners. Every day I see new notions of people being stolen by scammers. The last time was during SCO's ICO. The scammer turned on a simple message saying that the site was off the air and if you wanted to participate in ICO you should send the coins to the addresses listed by him. The newcomers, afraid of losing their chance to participate in ICO, started sending it to the false address. He managed to steal from people over 900 ETH.
Every day people receive private messages in the slack asking if they want to join PUMPS groups, or bots on poloniex. For this you must send a money amount, if you send ... will never see your coins again. Scammers create fake nicks like those of influential people or developers. Sometimes changing just some lyrics. For example, changing the "i" to "l". And not only that, a little search on the internet you will find that basically every week, some developer disappears with investors' money. Some examples only on this month:
OneCoin, Much Scam: 18 Seminar Organizers Arrested, $3 Mln Seized in OneCoin India Raids
Another Day, Another Scam: Ecoin Plus Disappears With Investors’ Cash
GAW Miners Creator Josh Garza Fined $12 mln For “Ponzi Scheme”
So lauro, what should I do to avoid this?
I like this methodology
There are criteria with various risk points. Summarize all the points of the criteria that the ICO meets to get total score. Total score represents a risk grade on which you can lean to take a risk or not.
Scam points and criteria:
1 point: minor suspicions (for each)
3 points: anon devs; no code snippets, videos, or beta; rushing
5 points: unrealistic goals; fuzzy whitepaper; self-mod topic
10 points: bought account; no escrow
Risk and total score:
low (0-5)
medium (6-10)
high (11-15)
very high (16-20)
extremely high (21 and more)
The above methodology is very simple and effective. Always remembering that :
Be on the lookout for any suspicious activity. No one on the team will ever contact you about purchasing, selling or joining pump groups, nor will we ask any info about your holdings.
The big question nowadays is that virtual money is still not fully regularized. So, it's easy for scammers to get away with their money without ever being caught. In this land without laws, you must always be attentive to every detail, a small hesitation and you lose all your coins. I've already been targeted and already hit some scams on the internet, later I'll tell you how this happened.
If you like, share.
Thanks guys
You definitely have to to have a good nose for sniffing out scams in the crypto world - there are thieves around every corner! I like your point system - if you follow that methodology that think you will avoid 90% of scams.
I would only add, think twice before hitting the send button in your wallet - assume that whover is asking for money is a thief until you've double checked everything about them. And avoid OneCoin like the plague, I don't know how they keep managing to trick people.
It should be less than a month old. A guy on stratis slack lost 40k in coins. That would be around $ 280,000. For a nonsense, downloaded a file with virus and gave access to his pc to the scammer.
Great and informative post,get rid of scammers!! Thanx for sharing :)
Thanks :)
Nice post. Surely just don't send your money to strangers asking for your money? It's the same as when people ring up asking for your bank details. By the way, what's an ICO?
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/initial-coin-offering-ico.asp