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Classic pay us to get lots of money scam.

Got this messages on discord
 
MEE6 ᵇᵒᵗToday at 5:31 PM
:tada::tada: Congratulations! :tada::tada:
You won 0.25 BTC in the Giveaway by Mercatox.org
Detailed Info and Conditions about Giveaway:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5171212

Your Promo Code: XXXXXXXX

How to use the promo code and get your winnings?
1) Register on the site: https://mercatox.org/
2) Go to the Account section and activate your Promo Code.
3) Exchange your BTC for any currency or withdraw to your BTC address.

:bangbang: Attention! :bangbang:
- Don't give this Promo Code to anyone. If someone uses it for you, we will not be able to return your winnings to you.
- Promo Code is valid 7 days from the date of issue.


So I signed up to Mercatox and loaded the promo code.

When i tried to withdraw it shows this.

Withdraw
Unfortunately, Mr. BBBBB.BBBBB your funds: 0.25 - BTC. are frozen until you make activated deposit. You will have to fund your account with some crypto to perform any transactions on the external decentralized network. You should to deposit at least 0.02 BTC to activate your account.

← back to

I'm kinda confused. Why did you register at mercatox.media if the message is telling you to register at mercatox.org?
Did they hijack your DNS or did the hyperlink on their original message leads to mercatox.media even if the text is mercatox.org?

The original thread is deleted so I can't confirm it.

I do not like this exchange and did not know that they have discord. but leaving it aside, why would they offer 0.25 BTC? Can you imagine how much loss they would have? This is something you should think about. always a merchant do Giveaway is because he will have big profit. Normally if it is an exchange they will say: "0.25 BTC Giveaway for people who trade above 1 BTC" ... but when you look for more information you will know that the first prize is 0.25 BTC and second place. 0.1 BTC third is 0.05 BTC and only win the guy who makes a lot of trade. in the end the exchange gets a lot of profit and the Giveaway is just something psychological to get more active clients. I'm explaining this so that in the future people won't be fooling with "Giveaway"

Neither mercatox.media nor .org are affiliated with the original website  (https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/mercatox/)(.com). If you check the footer of the website, you'll also see that they have no discord channels. You have clearly been phished.

The basic thing to remember here is that nobody gives out money for free. The scammers who operate such sites use three basic methods to blunt a victim's logical thinking - Greed, Fear or Doubt. Here they are trying to lure you into making a deposit which is the scam in the pretext that you will get a bigger reward for doing so. Obviously they are lying and this is a well known age-old scamming method.

I hope people develop some proper logic fro reading these incidents because every other day I find a new thread telling us about another same scam.

Real exchange have address mercatox.com , so websites you get in this mail are fake services - 100% scam!

It has been going on for a while now. Several users reported this kind of scam involving Mercatox scam website some days back. I shared a few of the links in a post I made.


If someone fell for this kind of scam then it will totally be their fault for trying to be so greedy for freebies.

Common sense will protect you on getting scammed.
First things first, original website link is mercatox.com and other sites shows different domain is 100% scam.
Second,making deposits or so amount verification before you would able to withdrawal is total BS scam attempt.
Third, no one gives easy free money nowadays.

I remember using mercatox before. They had really bad interface and a shitty service. Not sure how they are doing now. Did you just randomly receive a message from them? If yes, then that's a fake message you have received. Like Omega said, its a phishing site. Just a bit confused, why did you sign up on mercatox.media?
This scam sounds like those other scam we saw recently were promo codes were given for a casino website and you win loads of money on your first try but then you will have to deposit to withdraw your coins. Avoid those.

Do not open any message stating that "you have received money for free," no one distributes money for free.
You did not waste your time, but offered your email and perhaps your accounts "if you use the same password" to SPAM and HACK.
If they were smart they would give the user some satoshi, and then try to scam through a new promo containing with a request to deposit a small amount less than the amount withdrawn and so on until they gain trust.

Only if people know how to use the search engine properly then I bet there will be no victim for obvious phishing schemes.

Lets say you are newbie in the crypto world. How on earth are you going to think about searching out a site when you receive an email in the morning telling you to login here because you got some free coins?

Basically this is what people fall for. Like I said, scammers blunt the logic out their victims using Greed, Fear or Doubt. Of which Greed is the most commonly used method. For most of us who are cunning enough and use the counter logic that nobody give out money for free would raise the suspicion that this may be a scam attempt - only then would they google about the site. Get my point?

you can find it in google cache (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php%3Ftopic=5171212.0), if deleted here is the copy in archive.is (http://archive.is/A1dW4)
it was posted by Mercatox.Media (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2657733), and I think the fake site is mercatox.org
the thread received merit and had a few fake replies too, probably his alts or accomplices

whoever thinks can get easy 0.25 btc for free deserves to get scammed :P
a newbie with common sense wouldn't be easily fall for this kind of scam

I hope you at least didn't use a password that you've used on other websites.
Or used your regular e-mail address, you can be sure that they'll use that against you as well.

Kinda surprised that people actually fall for this, it's one of the most obvious scams out there!

I wonder for others, but for me, that's a habit, even before I entered in crypto world, copy/paste the link of some email then enter it on some browser.

And even my 13 y.o little sister or my mother would ask and wonder on how on earth they can get the iPhone they receive on some email telling that they win some raffles if after clicking the link they will ask you to deposit of some amount or give their credit/debit cards info on the site for a phishing attempt.

It's just that people are too greedy for such things.

Lots of pl are falling for this kind of scam. Im usually very curious to find out where the scam part is. I have a dedicated scam email address and use a random suggested password.

Another form of this scam is if someone ask you for "help", There account was locked for external withdrawals but they can transfer to other user accounts. I followed the instructions to find out where they will try to scam me. a standard thing of opening up a virtual box with a clean browser. Turned out to be the same type of scam where at some point the website requires you to "Activate" your account with a deposit.

Yeah, it's always kind of fun to see where the scam goes, you tend to see a lot of those scams on Discord and Telegram.
Some people probably do fall for it, mostly people who have no experience with crypto.

Good that you've taken precautions, using a virtual machine is generally a good move with this.
i wouldn't trust my to visit scam websites with my regular browser, malicious javascript can really do a number on you.

ugh I am getting spammed by MEE6bot as well.

Obviously, it's a phishing link that is not the right Mercatox site this is the real one https://mercatox.com/, this is one of the reasons why people traders should remember the exact name of the exchange and it's domain extension or better, bookmark the domain, or if you have the funds subscribe to metacert.

The real Mercatox site will never ask a deposit to their traders to claim a bonus.

Lol, I just received the following message on Discord from a Bot called "Giveaway Bot"

 I'm new here, registered only to let you know this scam is still going but now with a different domain name and a different topic id (which probably didn't even exist here in the first place):



Hey, at least they referred me to this forum... I know it's probably the biggest bitcoin forum out there so they're using bitcointalk.org's name to add more credibility to their scam.

Be safe friends,

Pedro


EDIT: I just double-checked the account that sent me the pm on Discord, and it turns out it's not even a real bot, just a regular user account pretending to be a bot (again, this scammer is just trying to add more credibility to his fake offer by pretending to be a bot that "randomly" sends you a prize). Stay away from this scammer if you use Discord: Giveaway Bot#3099

If you're an active trader on Mercatox, you'll know that they are using a cloud flare and they do not direct to .org domain. awareness is very important if you are not sure about the site coming from the link it's better to use Google, the legit domain will always show up in the first page.

Its good that you do able to scoop it out.Sometimes our self awareness and investigative mind do save us from scams.

Not all the times because phishing links or sites can possibly on the top search.So you should still be wary.

I doubt that is their official email. It sounds so weird. They would have to be extremely desperate for that. I love how you have to put a certain amount in to "activate" your account. It wouldn't matter how much you put in it would "active" with even cents since a transaction is the same as any other except for the amount.

I used their exchange and they didn't add my funds when I deposited. They also only emailed me once to help and I never heard of them again.