Bitcoin Forum

This is a SCAM ALERT!!

There are presently three Bitcoin Giveaway Scam that are Live and active now on YouTube. I have already reported and would request the community members also to do the same.

Original YouTube channels have been hacked. Here are the link

1. Elon Musk Bitcoin Giveaway - https://youtu.be/UkhmcXTLx84
2. Facebook Bitcoin Giveaway - https://youtu.be/I4vWDjXpBwY
3. Jack Dorsey Bitcoin Giveaway - https://youtu.be/UOHELKPT0Bk

Please report them.

I helped report it, but it doesn't seem to mean anything because they can just buy a YouTube account that has a certain number of subscribers and try to do another scam people again.

I have seen many times before, I am surprised what technology they have that they can imitate the real stars, so they are not just amateurs and I believe that funds they steal are in hundred of thousands of dollars  :'(.

You might want to consider placing this in the "Scam Accusations" board.  I would double check that it hasn't already been placed there before you do so.  Sadly there's a lot of different types of scams going on via YouTube.  I reported as well but I have little faith in this big corporate giants doing much about them. I do the same on Instagram all the time.  There are thousands of scam accounts trying to get you to invest in a "profit guarantee" bitcoin forex binary options.  I report them non-stop...nothing ever happens.

Reported. The fact that it looks like youtube didn't even care to prevent this by block them all. I just think this is why ripple sued youtube caused by it doesn't even create a prevention act to make sure the platform will not be used for criminal act.

This scam giveaway is live since last year! I don't know but maybe scammers got a good result through this attempt, otherwise why they don't get bored! I feel pity who fall in these scams, everyone should know those days are over when people gave free crypto money. Right now no one giving you free money, you have to earn it. So, Ignore all the offers through some random guy in twitter and telegram or even on Youtube!

Seen this kind of scams long before. Just curious if it's live for a few years already or not? ;D

This kind of giveaways needs not to be patronized, better to stay out or be sorry if being scammed. Very  important to everyone to have right information to avoid participating and be scammed of hacked from those people who are doing this inside youtube, if possible keep sharing your knowledge especially to those people who don't have any idea who are attracted to participate share and show your concern.

Yes it does, apparently there are still people who are foolish enough to sign up for this giveaway and through their money on the line. You can call it lack of using brain since they only think that they are getting some money for free and a good rate so why not try it.

It's not only that people still sign up for fake project giveaways so yeah as long as there are people are trusting these it's gonna continue and run.

Thanks OP, for bringing this to notice, there are several more scams as that in emails. They send activation link to your emails waiting for you to click straight on it.
Never verify an email you never signed up for.

I have a question, why does youtube allow scammers alot of time on their platform before bringing such accounts down.??

maybe if there are many who report youtube account there will be an action from youtube to delete the account, so that no one is trapped again with fraud like that, actually fraud like this has been there a long time ago and not just on youtube but on other social media like facebook , Twitter and Telegram

There is another, big one that I've posted here on Bitcointalk, with more than 200k subs trying to get ethereum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244027.msg54311627#msg54311627

Thanks for helping. Actually you can help more if you send or post this to scam accusation thread. Lots of people nowadays are focusing on scamming other people and this is why crypto is not safe from these people. Their favorite platform are those famous social sites such as facebook and youtube and used it to create some fraud activity. We cant really stop these guys from doing so especially now that crisis on every part of the world. Authority are being strict but still they are not totally apprehend these people.

They will keep doing this as long as they have willing victims who do not do research and just grab the offers it's easy to detect they have a comments turn off and they are using a bot to get views and likes now if you still for it, it's your fault for not doing research, have reported also.

Education and enlightenment is critical, scammers don't get tired if you do. It has been reported as requested but why is the page is still up by this time when many people have reported this? YouTube should channel their energy in appropriate direction and not to be giving strikes for those who are doing genuine job

Maybe Youtube has a lot of queries or topic to attend to. Witnessing growing number of these scams, perhaps those mentioned social sites can undergone a system protocol where they can easily detect those using abusive method on their platform. For example Facebook should automatic banned those IPs used to create account that discovered creating frauds. I know this would be hard to implement but these crimes will continue if those big platforms will not take any action or else they just allowing it cause they are benefiting from it? Purely an assumption but with their names, these activity could be restricted if they really want something to implement to avoid it.

Thanks for sharing important information as due to halving every person are not interested in Bitcoin and mostly don't investigate this type of giveaway and free airdrop.

Crypto giveaways on YouTube is more than just three, after reporting they won't stop, see scammers can easily buy channels with enough followers and do the schemes over again, we should keep warning those who don't know about it

So far, I have seen different scam giveaways on Youtube, and in fact, there are also some cases about a hacked account that were used on this kind of activity. I just viewed the link that you have provided OP and the account is still alive and it has a live video that is now airing. They even use a well-known person and famous social media platform to do these such things and I'm hoping that no one falls on these giveaways because it's purely scams. Probably, Youtube will immediately suspend those accounts after we report this and we should now eliminate this so they can't victimize other people.

Btw, I will now report those accounts and also thanks for sharing this information.

You are right not only three, but a great many. They did not buy a youtube account but hacked an account that already has many customers. That way it will be easy to make ordinary people believe. Besides reporting it, we must commemorate the new players.

I have reported all these channels. Hopefully Yotube will consider it and remove them from their platform. Also I think that there are many other fake channels exist and we need to find them to report. Otherwise there will be a lot of new people fooled by them

That's true but if youtube was actively monitoring the accounts that being used to promote or spread the scam giveaway and it will much better. I guess even we have been reporting it but youtube is not yet banning it and it seems like the accounts are still active spreading the scam giveaway.

This is a new form of scam, and it makes many people fooled because there are so many people using YouTube every day. I have reported these channels and hope it will be deleted as soon as possible

I think there are some cases of that kind of scamming that had been posted here in the forum already. Scammers doing youtube live showing some sort of evidence like displaying of fake bitcoin transactions or anything to attract possible viewers and take the bait. If someone is smart enough and knows how basically scaming in bitcoin or in crypto normally do then he/she would not fall to that of scheme.

I don't think it's easy to believe in large amounts of bitcoin or ethereum giveaway. Such giveaway in my opinion is a scam indicator because Bitcoin or ethereum are coins that are in demand by investors so it is almost impossible to get a giveaway from those coins

Thanks for posting it here, maybe we cannot do something about their channel because they can just look for another youtube account to deceive some people with their fake giveaways but we can tell newbies what kind of fake bitcoin giveaway looks like. We can give them some ideas on how they will act if they see such kind of channel. posting scams like this will surely bring newbies some benefits if they read carefully what the OP's saying.

Yep, this has been happening. I thought that this was already done a few months ago but here they are, they came back.

It is sad that there are people that are hoping for those giveaways to be real and joins them. Everyone should avoid these stream crypto giveaways as much as you can if you are not aware of how to determine if one is a scam.

Lately a lot of YouTube accounts above 100k subcriber, which have been hacked and used as a give away event. in my country as far as I know there are already 3 accounts that have been hacked, even there are accounts that have reached one million subscribers. It would be nice to be more careful, I suspect this hacker sent an email to the account owner on behalf of YouTube.

Better for us to help each other to report that bitcoin giveaways scam because if more people are watch that video and promote the scam project and other invest to the project they lose money so better for us to stop that now.

Giveways is good if that is legit but if it's not you are the one who are cause why people are still scam by the scammer so please be careful what to promote project or investment.

These videos are easy to identify as scams, but Report these videos are not effective, scammers can easily create new videos. Educating new people in this form of fraud will be effective

I have done my share of reporting this scam giveaway if it's live people should continue reporting this scam, if many are reporting it will be disabled if they continue buying accounts, we'll continue reporting until they stop doing so if they cannot scam anymore they will stop doing this.

Reported already Mate and thanks for the warning because this seems legitimate that is why there are chances that this can victimized people here.

May i Suggest that you create a formal Scam Accusation in this section as for the record and for the look out also of the experts here?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0

There is nothing free in this market. If there is any suggestion regarding a giveaway, I think people should stay away from it. Scammer will definitely ask you to deposit some money to receive the token. And after you send the money, they will certainly block you

Reported.
Thanks for the heads up.

But the names of it.
They really sound like scam names.  ;D Elon Musk? I bet he wont do that. Facebook? Nah. Jack Dorsey? No way.
The name says it all.
A nice way of spreading awareness in your part. Doubt the names.

Almost all of the link channel in youtube was already deleted by youtube rules for violating the community policy in the platform.
Anyway, I don't trust any giveaway that has been showed in any of the social media's because most of them are scammers actually, that's the real thing happens anyway.

These videos are new, that means they are not going to stop as long as there are people who do not want to research, we never run out of greed people who will create videos like this, and newbies who easily fall to this kind of scheme, we should mass report it so Youtube will disable this kind of videos.

I feel it is a lost cause my friend. I always report on any scam I see, whether Telegram (which I give up now) or here on this forum or anywhere else but people cannot be protected by us, they have to protect themselves,,, and unfortunately this is not the case. People simply believe in giveaways even though it cannot possibly be true.

This is why a few times ago Youtube made a decision to ban crypto advertisement.

I've seen this giveaway everyday and I just skiped it because I've known that this a scam attemp.

Also, I've seen in this forum as well who have reported it in scam accusation board. You may need to move this thread to scam accusation too because that is the right section.

It seems like there is no end to scammers doing fake livestream giveaway, there are actually many channels like that which are banned but they reappear. I read several of articles about this, most of the youtube channel also results from hacking a YouTube account that has many subscribers by offering cooperation to advertise or review products from scammers.

I never believe every giveaway on Youtube is real. Because i never see the winner from giveaway on Youtube. Not only Bitcoin giveaway, most of giveaway on Youtube is fake.
Don't join if you don't want to waste your time and get scam.

the scams are running for a while now and the YouTube platform is not taking any concrete steps to stop them. According to a recent news (https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229762/ripple-xrp-lawsuit-youtube-trademark-brad-garlinghouse-impersonation-crypto-giveaway-scam) ripple is taking this matter to court as they are suing YouTube for not stopping these types of scams. Similarly if Eetherum Alliance and bitcoin community join hands and put some pressure on YouTube regarding this matter we may see the end of these type of scams.

Scam has become the order of the day, have we asked ourselves if we don't patronise this scam if they would go ahead? It time we avoid these give away before we actually get scammed, be careful of YouTube give aways and others.

We should give this case full attention.  This can not be happen.  If we let this happen easily,  it will never stop.  We should not see this as tiny case because it will spread all over part of crypto world. The scammers will not stop until they get punishment.

They just live stream a popular video from the past and add a frame claiming it's a giveaway from the person or company and the most interesting part it it has a large number of subscribers and people easily fall believing it to be the official channel.
Youtube should work on it before displaying such fake subscriber and should develop an algo to stop such live streaming.

Does anyone know if they are really streaming live or not ? I think if we can know, we will be able to identify the scam giveaway.
We should look on their social media if they are really holding giveaway live streaming, maybe on their twitter, facebook and others.

Those are recorded files. I've watched one and it's from a crypto conference and obviously if they will stream with live with that kind of background, it's easy to determine that they are fake because the world is in pandemic and such conferences are not allowed.

Yes, this is the key. Verifying the main and official website or social media accounts of that supposed company that's running a giveaway is a must. And if you can't see any from their main website or there's no announcement, then it's a scam.

Normally, only the greedy ones fall victim of this.
Imagine something they call giveaway, yet they will request that you send a certain amount of coin to receive more than you have sent. That shows clearly that it is scam.
if they truly are so benevolent to give out something freely, they should do that without collecting anything first from their audience.
Most of the times, their scheme are foiled on this forums and this forum does not allow such because it is against its rule. So since they cannot do it here, they look for other channels through which it can be done. One of which is what we now see.

Hi Guys thank you for reporting.

Thats exactly what happened to me I was scammed exactly like this.

My friend helped me made channel on youtube fight scammers. Here are my so far videos about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvSshZ1vvEU&t=166s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBaYoOWjnhQ&t=133s

is any chance someone can help me please to get my btc back for reward ??

It can only be possible if the scammers are traced and the authorities confiscated all those he scammed and call out people they scam so they can send coins that they've scammed, it's a lesson learned but this thing should be stopped because it's hurting the community.

There are several illicit page on YouTube and it takes someone with understanding to avoid the temptation of falling for those unscrupulous individuals. You did well, trying to inform the public, but I know there are several others that we don't know about. The pages on twitter that carry out this schemes are much more. God help us.

Now they are moving to telegram, every day I see hundreds of spam on elon musk giveaway posts. Obviously these are just photoshop scams and if new people are not careful, they could be trapped by scammer and and they will lost money

This is very annoying, too, there have been a lot of spam posts in the telegram about giveaway and there have been many catches like this in the string of accusations and therefore they are only targeting beginners to become victims of it.

Reporting those giveaways on YouTube won't bring it down, even if that happened another one will pop up in few weeks later, this giveaways only become attractive to those who are too greedy, those who think things are easy and free on the internet, always looking for impossible ways of making money

Well thanks for the report, I have not known much about give away on YouTube.  Well familiar with that of the twitter and some other social media.  Anyway, lots of scams are in give away that's why I don't really put much attention on it again.  It's good to check well before participating so that it won't amount to waste of time and other vital resources.

The spam images in telegram will be quickly deleted by bots. But it still makes me feel uncomfortable because it appears everywhere, hoping no one will participate in those bullshit airdrops. It was created by scammer and they just want to steal the information or money of the victims

They are not only active in telegram but they were active in all of platforms. They were using various tricks and they have been using so many youtube vides that related to the crypto to scam newcomers.
Mostly they were putting their address to be used by the victim to send their money to that scam address.

With so many posts posted about this kind of giveaway yet many people still fall for this scam giveaways, I guess not many people are doing enough research, they are just going on who are the personalities involve and they just go for it, this is very unfortunate if many people tend to believe instantly, many more people will be victimized creating more posts about this can still help, people should just continue reporting.