Bitcoin Forum

What happened: One of the team member is using a stock photo from the internet.

Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3530233
Truqoin ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5436221.0
Truqoin WEBSITE: https://www.truqoin.info/
Truqoin ARCHIVED ANN: https://archive.md/0tchD

READ: One team member of the project was stolen from a stock photo website.

https://i.postimg.cc/ZqXnWC3d/Screen-Shot-2023-01-26-at-10-04-27-PM.png

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https://i.postimg.cc/qBxBTmmn/Screen-Shot-2023-01-26-at-10-03-56-PM.png

REAL IDENTITY: Stock photo
PROFILE LINK/S:
https://www.yandex.com/images/search?text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reverse-image-search.org%2Ftempimgs%2F6203834731674741710.png&rpt=imageview&url=https%3A%2F%2Favatars.mds.yandex.net%2Fget-images-cbir%2F7870423%2FAFT4VhOtmkbeQrTHugOFzw1715%2Forig&cbir_id=7870423%2FAFT4VhOtmkbeQrTHugOFzw1715

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holydarkness was able to discover that:

All three of them are fake.

Here's Preston Stewards

https://i.ibb.co/xqGcZFS/Fake-2.jpg (https://ibb.co/s9QD7Wv)

And Lutz, let's suppose he's real, he didn't mention truqoin on his profile, so it's probably stolen without him being aware his picture and name is borrowes. That's assuming Lutz is a real person. It might worth mentioning that his current employment, the founder of Various Lutz, is somewhat questionable as Various Lutz Companies is not registered on CA company directories.

https://i.ibb.co/xGRBy0w/Lutz.jpg (https://ibb.co/zb0B1YC)
https://i.ibb.co/ns9STVf/No-lutz.jpg (https://ibb.co/PZK8Rb4)

Well, This is still a red flag. Since they are also on the forum, Did you try to reach them and ask about it?
Did you find anything else suspicious apart from the fake team? If you find anything else, it could raise a big red flag.
I don't know why a legit team would use Stock and fake photos for their team member. They may keep it blank if one doesn't want to reveal their identity. But, Inserting a phony picture is a red flag.

Nice catch. To be honest, sometimes when we see an announcement thread we can not expect something good from the project. Once I visited the ann thread first time I understand that it's a random ann thread that is made by some unprofessional man/team. They don't even care about the ann thread and how it should be presented to the community. Even they don't care about the project. They just want if somehow they can arrange some funds from the fool investors.

I am going to tag them.

Umm... We might want to revise that. All three of them are fake.

Here's Preston Stewards

https://i.ibb.co/xqGcZFS/Fake-2.jpg (https://ibb.co/s9QD7Wv)

And Lutz, let's suppose he's real, he didn't mention truqoin on his profile, so it's probably stolen without him being aware his picture and name is borrowes. That's assuming Lutz is a real person. It might worth mentioning that his current employment, the founder of Various Lutz, is somewhat questionable as Various Lutz Companies is not registered on CA company directories.

https://i.ibb.co/xGRBy0w/Lutz.jpg (https://ibb.co/zb0B1YC)
https://i.ibb.co/ns9STVf/No-lutz.jpg (https://ibb.co/PZK8Rb4)

If you don't mind, would you post on their ann thread to invite them here so they can properly give their defense... suppose they're legit. I doubt they will, though.

Meanwhile, will also tag them.

I don't think they can defend this, they can defend plagiarism but stealing photos and claiming it to be part of the team is just impossible to defend, on plagiarism the most common alibi is they hire a writer to write a whitepaper for them but ended up copying other project's whitepaper, this is as good as we tag to be, scammers.
A fake team is a big no, because the platforms and roadmap depend so much on the team's skills and background.

Hey, thanks for this holy! I am going to edit my post and include your findings as well. For some reason, reverse-image search was not able to find the other two (2) members as well. I guess these are overwhelmingly evidence that signifies that the ANN is indeed a scam. Having fake team members constitute fraud and their deliberate intention to defraud other people.

With this finding, I will create a flag agains the user to alert other forum members in order to avoid this project at all cost. As always, thanks holy!


Yup, there is no way that an ANN thread can defend fake team members on their project. This is a deliberate attempt on their end to create a fake project to defraud investors with a quick rug and pull.

I don't think they can defend this, they can defend plagiarism but stealing photos and claiming it to be part of the team is just impossible to defend, on plagiarism the most common alibi is they hire a writer to write a whitepaper for them but ended up copying other project's whitepaper, this is as good as we tag to be, scammers.
A fake team is a big no, because the platforms and roadmap depend so much on the team's skills and background.

Great catch dude, what makes me laugh is that the team of this scam project did not bother to hire a designer to crop the stock images for their project team in a good and professional way  ;D

All that these scammers did was buy a domain, then put any information in its stolen template and whitepaper, then create a shitcoin for their project, then put stock images from the Internet for their fake team, then come to the crypto forums, and publish an ANN topic about their project, and all this did not cost them $5 in order to deceive investors and drag them into the mud. Therefore, I advise anyone who wants to invest to do their research and not rush to make any decision.

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Domain Information :

https://i.postimg.cc/zXG9Gy6X/2023-01-27-203056.png

They have not done a marketing campaign yet which is good, there would have been efforts wasted if they did already before they got caught.
They pick the old guys' photos also which makes it more suspicious lol

Old tricks of ICO teams are revived. If they are old ICO scammers, they wouldn't be stealing photos online since this is the easiest to spot due to google images.

So many ICO in the past have been exposed because of having a fake team, but that's what scammers are doing for the past three years, the developers of this project obviously are not aware that they are easy to catch because there are many tools available online if they resort to stealing people's pictures.
There are three warnings, plagiarism, fake team, and not working platform, if you're investing in ICO you have to learn how to flag projects by checking these three.