Bitcoin Forum

What happened:
Yet another ICO scam thread is what happened.

Which ICO scam does it involve this time?
A vague nonsensical 'social media' blockchain-magical-fairy-dust-app called 'Karbon'.

Their announcement thread can be found here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2042235.msg20328432#msg20328432)

The Bought/Hacked forum account used to post the OP can be found here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=233840)

Their bounty thread to get people to promote their scam can be found here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2118189.msg21180511#msg21180511)



Example:

This bought or hacked account keeps posting the same messages over and over, for example this one:

I don't mean to blow my own horn but I sent 2 messages to the Altcoins mod this morning at around 9am about a different user doing the same thing (daemmon) and also posted on the Meta board at 12.37 pm.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2119557.msg21191395#msg21191395

is that really scam?

New ANN (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2128139.0) and bounty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2128162.0) thread.

Tagged.

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Look at all those illiterate bounty campaign spammers. They are completely ignoring your post and just spamming. ::)

I just wanted to translate that campaign and get a bounty , I didn't know that campaign is a scam , my main role is translator and bounty manager , actually I manage 7 translated campaigns and 1 bounty campaign . You ruined all my work and my reputation with your red report . You must to understand that I DIDN'T KNOW THAT IS A SCAMM , and I apologize , i will check before to reserve another translation

I'm getting tired of all the bounty-seeking twats helping these scammers con more people into believing they are legitimate, solely because you can't be bothered to actually look up a few posts and see that it has already been called out as a fraudulent ICO.

I'll remove your rating this time but I tend to limit the appeal process to a one-time-only opportunity.

Do better in future.

Thank you for understanding , sorry but that account "Kentedvard" , the original owner of the bounty thread , he didn't get a report at that time when I posted the reservation for translation . I thought it was real , but after he got a report by Lauda , you can check the time when it was reported .

Thank you for your time
Have a great day

Hello, i dont now that carbon is a scam ^( what should i do with negative trust ?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=415135
Please help me, I really did not know I just wanted to participate in the company of signatures.

Good job cryptodevil, Too many scams masquerading as legitimate ICO's on the forum. Is there a way to create a thread or sub listing these scams? It will be of great help to the community.

Delete all your supporting posts for the scam and, once done, notify me and I will remove the rating.

Next time be more diligent.

Thank you very much for your understanding, I will be more attentive to the future, I deleted posts and the signature, once again I thank you very much.

Thanks for your help and support in trying to protect the community from scams Cryptodevil.  We need more people like us in the community.

There is a big problem not with the reporting SCAMs , which I totally support, but with his methods. The same work that he has to FALSE reporting people of "Promoting scam coin", he should at least give a warning to the person first.
He gave me a negative trust because I candidate to make a translation for the coin not knowing it´s a SCAM, nothing else. Since I am a newbie here, I didn´t know where to check and see what coin is Scam or not. Not warning people, just giving them a bad rating for candidacy is NOT HONESTY. It´s easier to do, but very dishonest work. Since he is the POLICE for SCAMMERS, honesty should be a policy of his work, not this.
A fair WARNING, should guide his activity beforehand.
So he ruins people reputation for no reason, instead of doing his job the right way.

Yes, I apologize for being naive, or a newbie. But that´s not right and I want my trust rating repaired.
Please.

You don't exactly live up to your username given that you posted this TWO DAYS AFTER this scam had been exposed.


Yeah you don't really come across as so contrite in your dm to me, though:

It would probably be a good idea perhaps to start by deleting the post you made offering to translate for this scam and then try asking me to reconsider the rating, no?

You better delet your posts abour that scam...

First of all, I admit that I am suppose to learn more about how things work here, and I am just finding out of your comment that I can delete my request for translation from there.
Second of all, Yes I PM you even before I report you, and I said you I would because I was mad about your methods.
Third, you´re stating that I candidate to translate with the knowledge that the coin was a scam. That´s untrue, you have been reported in your past for promoting scam coin. Did you know it? Did you do do it on purpose? That´s why you assume that I would do it? And, where was the warning that the coin was a scam? Was in the thread itself? So, it´s a lot of questions that could be avoided with a simple message.
But you don´t take the trouble to warn people, do you? You just come to an assumption, and like the all powerful authority, you go out damaging people reputation without any concern.
So, if you want to do a POLICE job that I think it´s VERY VALUABLE and APPLAUSABLE, do it right. Don´t be a jerk up front, be fair. A simple warning would avoid all of that.
I am not a kid anymore, so I am here to be a scumbag, I value my reputation and what you did, made me really mad.
So, please repair my trust and I do it likewise.

First of all, I admit that I am suppose to learn more about how things work here, and I am just finding out of your comment that I can delete my request for translation from there.
Second of all, Yes I PM you even before I report you, and I said you I would because I was mad about your methods.
Third, you´re stating that I candidate to translate with the knowledge that the coin was a scam. That´s untrue, you have been reported in your past for promoting scam coin. Did you know it? Did you do do it on purpose? That´s why you assume that I would do it? And, where was the warning that the coin was a scam? Was in the thread itself? So, it´s a lot of questions that could be avoided with a simple message.
But you don´t take the trouble to warn people, do you? You just come to an assumption, and like the all powerful authority, you go out damaging people reputation without any concern.
So, if you want to do a POLICE job that I think it´s VERY VALUABLE and APPLAUSABLE, do it right. Don´t be a jerk up front, be fair. A simple warning would avoid all of that.
I am not a kid anymore, so I am here to be a scumbag, I value my reputation and what you did, made me really mad.
So, please repair my trust and I do it likewise.

I deleted my post on that thread, I don´t support scams, mostly because I don´t want to be scammed either

ismart1, from what I can see from cryptodevil, he certainly has a lot on his hands. It is one of his main responsibilities to make this forum free of scammers so anyone could browse through it and invest with complete confidence and without a shadow of doubt that it may be a scam. (of course, that would be the ideal image). To do this, he has to ban all those who have been 'involved' one way or another. Who knows with all these hacked accounts who may be who.

Just be calm about it and discuss it in private with him if he has enough time. The best you can do is remove all the work you have connected to Karbon and then notify cryptodevil of your actions. I am sure he will be lenient if you provide a proper reason for it and have taken enough actions in removing your work. I would also suggest you also remove your negative trust from his profile. Remember, you can always give negative trust back if you are still mad.

Cryptodevil thanks for contributing to the community and we hope to see many more ICOs busted! Of course, it would be best if there were no scammers in the first place.....

Can you elaborate a bit? Unfortunately I've sent some gas over (fortunately not much, but enough to make me angry). They say it was a marketing issue but I still see fishy comments on their pages...

Still, their page was advertised on coinmarketcap just recently and is on quite a few legit pages
Thanks

What are my options if I was a victim of this scam? Thank you

Nothing.... At least nothing that I yet know of. You could launch a legal action against Karbon and their team, but it would cost too much, it would take too much time and in the end you might not even get back any money.

Try to use the knowledge you have learnt through this and make sure you look out for further scammers when investing into any ICO.

#howtospotascam101
Adverts cost next-to-nothing compared to the profit made by a scam, so don't treat them as any proof of legitimacy.

#howtospotascam101
Learn to tell the difference between a legit news article and a paid one.

#howtospotascam101
Treat EVERYTHING you read on CoinTelegraph.com as suspicious. They are the number 1 promoter of scams and have been for a long time now.
They don't give a shit about you, they only care that they get paid for adverts and promo-articles masquerading as 'news'.

All valid points, but what I was asking is, outside the basic '101' noob error I made sending them money without due diligence (won't happen again), can you clarify why you are absolutely certain this is a scam?
You heard something or you are just making assumptions based on your '101' rules (in which case *maybe* there is still hope to see my money back and hope the Karbon guys are just cowboys...)

They were caught posting 100 pages of repeating bot-posts on their thread. That alone is sufficient to know they are fraudulently misrepresenting their ICO, let alone numerous other aspects to the con you can practice spotting yourself.

And they deleted my posts pointing to this thread in both their ANN and bounty thread too!

Yep... not to mention the 50% bonus countdown on their home page that seems to reset every time to "12 hours until bonus end". Oh well, what is done is done, I still have hope...



Well, that is defo bad advertising for them - their bounty thread is linked from their webpage, warnings from cryptodevil are still there tho

And there's announcement thread #3 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2143925.0)

 ::)

So why did they let the third announcement pass :(
I have to say it looks a bit better since they added the lady doing the presentation - however, the poloniex and bittrex logos that are on the announcement are not present on the page...Also they seem to have removed the bots from everywhere. Still 12 hours to go until the end of 50% bonus tho XD

Aaaaand, its a self moderated thread. How suprising!  :D

Users of this forum should be able to express their views about any ICO. Even if it is a scam ICO, people should be able to say that and remind others of that in their thread.

Please report them to the authorities: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2126042.msg21494897#msg21494897

And another bot-posting account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=264813) repeatedly posting the same content from before and then deleting it and replacing it.

Someone, preferably Cryptodevil, tell me this:

- If you are going to spam bot with bought accounts (already the start of something bad....), why put things into so extreme perspectives? Like, that I am trying to ask is that why are the bots made to post literally every 1 minute on 1 account. Why aren't they programmed to post every 40 minutes or so?

- For all those other ICOs that use view-bots, again, why are they not made to have realistic numbers in perspective? I saw a few weeks ago an ICO that got around 700,000 views in under 24 hours. (I might not remember correctly, but it was certainly a large number - an unrealistic value).

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I am not trying to endorse any sort of this behaviour, I am just curious why these scammers are so blatant.  

Because they need to keep the thread from dropping down the first page of the forum and, as they generally have very little time between announcing their [insert bullshit 'innovative' fairy-dust-blockchain-ethereum-token-platform here] project and actually launching the ICO, they need to pump the thread up to large numbers of posts very quickly.

It also helps to bury the influx of posts alerting other users to the fact the ICO is a scam. Many of these frauds are conducted across multiple social-media platforms and users who load a bitcointalk page and are not logged in will not see the negative trust rating the scammer accounts usually pick up. If the page they see doesn't include a post warning them it is a scam they may believe it is legit because it appears to be a busy thread.

Frankly, barring a low-single-digit number of genuine ICOs with potential, you should consider them all as scams or, at best, poorly-constructed cash-grabs to prop up failing businesses or to bail their team-members out of personal debt.

They don't look any different to me than what was happening during 2014/15 with copy-pasta clone-coin projects which were hyped by largely-anonymous scammers posting endless pages of 'Wall St and Whales' memes, promising their coin was just about to 'moon' at any moment, shortly before they dumped their bags on the market and ran with the bitcoin.

I've tried to mail the Bittrex support in the meantime asking if they are actually supporting karbon, given that their logo is on their page...
Unfortunately I got a generic reply saying that


If anybody has better luck with Poloniex, maybe that helps, but this kind of behavior from Bittrex doesn't help the community overall

So Karbon is a scam and I just lost about $12,000 and your winning about your rating and repair my reputation.  Ever hear of diligence, your rating should be zero or send me $12,000.  I assumed that ICO websites who post and market these companies and allow money to be accepted, should do a little more diligence.  It's like a 5 year old running a company.  Did you get paid for helping translate or whatever it is you do. 

Your post is a few days old, but I didn't see it...this forum is like that.  It's like life: You
get the test first, then you get the lesson.  And if you haven't figured it out yet, a lot of the
new ICOs are shady at best, and some, like this one are outright scams.  Cryptodevil is doing
what he sees fit as far as policing, and it definitely needs to be done.

The issue of these translations is a whole other problem, one that has implications that reach far
beyond people getting scammed.  I'm talking about shit posting and so forth, ruining the quality
of bitcointalk.  People are so desperate for online work that they'll use google translate to pump
out total crap and pass it off as good work.  Stay away from that, that's what I say.

The ICO scam bubble is going to post soon, people are becoming more keen to inspecting before they invest. The whole Altcoin ANN section now is a shitshow.