Bitcoin Forum

INTRODUCTION
 Cyber crime is on the rise, they just seem to pop up everywhere on Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, LinkedIn you name it. They are relentless posing as people whom they are not. Scammers take advantage of ignorant people looking for investments and want to jump on the Bitcoin train. And because of their ignorance of the crypto space they are easy prey for scams. You would think if someone has been scammed once that would be enough. But scammers often target investors who have lost money in a risky investment. They'll contact the investor with an offer to help  you recover your funds only to rip you off in the end. Most cases the victims of these scams do not share their story because of the shame that comes with losing your money. But keeping silent creates room for someone else to fall victim to the same scam. We have to keep up, educate and report these scams.

4 Signs Of A Crypto Investment Scam:

High returns and low risk - Promising unrealistic returns is popular among scammers. This of course is a red flag.
Random texts from a beautiful lady telling you to invest - If you live long enough in the crypto space, every now and then you'd experience this.
Pressure to invest- Scammers always try to rush you into investing so you don't have time to think about it or talk your friends about the investment
 They all follow the same or a similar script - beautiful girl, luxury cars and houses. Also check out for mistakes in their grammar.

Steps To Avoid Being Scammed
Avoid investments if you don’t understand them or can’t get complete information about them.
Don’t put your money in investments that promise huge returns with little to no risk.
Be skeptical if you don’t receive a payment or have difficulty cashing out when due. They usually come up with silly excuses like delivery fee, tax and all that.

CONCLUSION
Do your own research before investing in any project. Save yourself of the pain of losing your money. Report any suspicious account to the relevant authorities. We can all have a safe healthy community free from scammers if we do our part.

All these can only work on newbies, I don't use any platforms that are unknown to me, I've seen few newbies even asking questions first before using any new platform, if you are a newbie you need to be smart, before joining any platform for trading make sure you seek answers on this forum first

The main reason we are getting scam due to not using our common sense. Sometimes when we see a greedy offer then we just become emotional, then we do not ask our common sense if we should invest here. Blindly we invest there and handover our hard works money to scammer pocket. Always should ask your brain before invest anywhere if it's crypto-related. We always have been looking to earn money shortcut which isn't possible ever. Why our mind doesn't want to believe that there is no such as a money-making machine?

Although we can't prevent 100% scams, we can minimize them. Keep in mind, who have been offering a high return within a short time, just stay away from it. Be careful with a greedy giveaway, that's the most scamming method lately. Try to work hard and earn it legally. Ask this community if something on your mind. Hope you will get helpful information from here.

In general, the most important to remember is the no red flag rule. You see a single red flag, you bail. Don't let greed take over and make you ignore these signs.
There's a lot of them but some of the most common are:
Promises of big profits, asking for money, offering ridiculous gains of 50% a month or more, website with spelling/grammar mistakes, fake pictures, no employee details and no pictures, fake reviews, too many positive reviews, a lot of reviews added in a very short time, promoting via paid articles, employing scammers who used to work for other similar schemes...
There's really a lot of it and if you spend some time checking each and every case you'll find out they make mistakes. There are no ideal schemes.

The easy to fall for by ignorant people are scams, there are varying degrees and different types of cyber criminals now, most of the methods used to scam is not really different from time to time, but despite this, scam is still increasing daily. Many people that are scammed are greedy, not patient and not researching about offers, that is why such people are scammed until they learn lesson.

Example of scam can be through Google store, social media like Facebook and Twitter, scam can be of different types but having knowledge about it can completely help and protect against it.

I will like to add hacking, one of the ways to also scam, to avoid these kind of scam require people to have good knowledge about computers and other devices used to access online,  how the devices can be protected and ways to avoid these hackers because they are dangerous. That is why we are in the age of protecting our devices used to access online in a way to avoid malacious files not to be downloaded on the devices.

GREED, this is one of the reasons why people get scam.  The massive scam of Twitter recently was an example of this, people think that they are in a win-win situation once they will put up a little amount they will surely gain profit as the sweet promise of double your money. 

I tend to agree above that we must use our common sense when it comes to investment, and think twice or thrice before joining in HYIP that likely end up as a scam.  So we must be careful and be vigilant about this kind of scam attempt, keep in mind always that there's no free money on the internet and every time you put money in every investment, think about where did they generate profit and paid their users out.

Anyway, thanks to the input of OP, this will remind the newcomers to be vigilant at all times.

Collection of comprehensive guides on identify and avoid scam projects (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125435.msg50347145#msg50347145)

Coolcryptovator spent time to write some helpful guides to detect scam projects.
🌍 Guidelines, how to spot a scam ICO & report effectively. ✔ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5004397.0)
🌍[Guide] Prevent scam!!! Some useful tools for find scam / fake ICO team 🌍 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4586576.0)
[Guide] How to detect fake token and spot scammers. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5049749.0)

Guides are helpful and advice can help you but only you can protect you from scam projects. Being knowledgeable and being controllable of your emotion to protect your money.

Research has been an essential component of investment. It is conducted for the proper management of portfolios, prevent scams, and understand the functionality of the market. Investors should be responsible as it risks their financial assets, especially that scams are lurking around on numerous platforms. We should understand some of those could be executed to provoke investment fraud. Therefore, we should conduct cross-checking to detect any distinctive signs.

Scam websites sometimes don't make sense to give big profits in an easy way. no wonder even though there are many people who lose, there are still new people interested to website scams. When people still have a vision of wanting to get money quickly and easily, the scam will still exist.

It's only the ignorant and novice in cryptos that still falls victim to this kind of scamming techniques. As relentless as they seem to be, the more the community is relentless in unmasking scammers and their scam techniques.
Scammers only thrive on ignorance and that's the more reason why it becomes of utmost importance to read articles as many as you can find it on the boards, it's the only way to knowing without experiencing it first hand. Promise of high returns are always a tempting investment plan or package and as such, the more to be weary about.

Whenever I see investments that offer promised returns in high amounts, it's already a sign of being too good to be true. You can ask the person asking you to invest that he doesn't have to share it and become a millionaire with that investment.

But sadly, there are newbies that are too greedy to catch with this trap. I think today many are learning how to spot on those scam investments especially with all the news that is circulating online about scam investments.

This is really the most common bait that they are using to fool investors to fall for their scam.

People wants to have an easy profit and wants to have an instant growth in their investment that's why they are rooting for a low risks.

But investments doesn't work that way, we all know that in order to make our investments grow, we need to deal with the risks. The mindset that we should understand is that the higher the risks, the higher the profits and we need to work that way. Scammers will never stop doing bad things, unless we are knowledgeable on how to avoid them.

The reason why people get scammed is greed and not using their common sense in time of investment. Don’t be desperate or naive when it comes to investing because you will soon loose your funds if you don’t make the right decision and think smart. Don’t be astonished by high investment outcome but rather should be concerned about the KYC of the investment platform.

Many at times people who are scammed don’t share their ugly experience for others to learn so out of shame they keep silent and these act is giving room for scammers to do more.

Strange investments are always scammed especially when they give you a high return in a short period. Those kinds of investments are always evolving or they make it more innovative to make it different but they're always scamming people in a different way. You need to be vigilant if someone gives you an offer to invest in something you are not familiar with, especially when it involves cryptocurrencies because in this industry, there are lots of so-called investment platform and even some of the unknown exchanges will turn out to be scammed if they have some opportunity to disappear. Like what has happened to Octaex.

There are many more websites that indicate an investment scam. The easiest way for us to detect the site is a scam investment or not by seeing what they offer to us.
If the reward or the return is too big to believe, that can be the way for us to get a scam, and we should be careful.
This time, I see that many cloud mining websites launch again and attract people, especially new people, to join them and deposit some money to buy the hash power.
The only thing that we can do is always be careful and do not deposit the money if we do not have more information about the offers.

Most if the website looks like HYIP investments, they have too good to be true rewards and unrealistic promises, only the greedy people will fall for this, only few people are smart enough to ask questions about a platform on this forum for good answers, many just go ahead and invest in whatever they find.

Scammers are in every field, they all use the formula and most of them are successful because those who got scammed were too greedy and could not resist the offer.

In my opinion, people should use some common sense before falling into such scams they should question themselves when they are offered such lucrative offers as to why are they offering him/her only. That should solve a lot of problems.

I mostly receive this kind of crypto investment scam in my Telegram and Twitter account because they can easily spot on if I were engaging in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. They mostly put pressure on me, insisting me to invest in their scam project. I think I receive a message from a random stranger on my Telegram about bitnexprofits.com. He asked me first if I currently hold a cryptocurrency, and he started to tell me about this and send his fake information and BTC wallet address.

That's a clear sign of a red flag! Even the moderators of a telegram community who always insist that they are not going to send a private message first but still become a useless/ vaporware project in the end -- what will you expect for those people who keeps sending investment opportunities that seems too good to be true? That's nonsense  ::)

Make use of the settings in telegram to choose what people who can send a direct message to you; it's a good idea to filter those shitty accounts.

OP, you emphasize very strongly that beautiful girls can invite you. Let this be your first red flag. If you calmly think in cold blood, then no one will ever talk about their business, which brings good money. This is done only by scammers who rely on human greed.
Even with all the positive aspects of investing in a project, we have to check everything several times. There is a lot of information that can help protect your funds from theft. Therefore, the first rule is to always create a pause to check everything and think everything over. You never need to rush, whether a beautiful girl or, on the contrary, a handsome man invites you.

To spot the project is scam first do a research about the team and their project. The Scam project has a  Promising unrealistic returns like you have a High returns and low risk. Dont be fool like that just look for the trusted site to search about the best project and not scam

A short scenario, you became so bored to learn over something, very hard to teach something you don't want to learn, a sharp guy calls you to short cut to you what you want, explains to you clearly because he knew you don't want to learn, you became lossed and be a victim of been scammed.
What if you have learnt, you can't be smart all the times, you must surely make mistake which everyone does due to one lazy moment to another, you find out you already in the trap.
Lesson: Never do what you don't understand, learn something first and be careful at all time even when you have learnt it. Doing that will spot out scam gradually.
Haha, this is funny ;D

Most of the cloud mining websites that I have seen are scams, a lot of them have like "hashes" that you can buy with normal USD, and they say that it gives you an X amount of mining power that goes towards generating you revenue and they have obscene amounts listed, like "200% ROI in 1/2/3 months". Stay away from those. They will take your money and then one day, you'll find they have packed up and sold their websites.

Also, stay away from the referral sites that make you buy Y amount of slots from them so that you can refer people and seemingly "earn X% on the amount your referrals spend". Those are gonna cost you money and ultimately return nothing, and anyone you invite will end up getting scammed too.