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I have been questioning the Crypto market for quite some time, and I tried to invest a few hundred dollars in it a year ago, and then forgot about it seeing it was too confusing to me.  After a year, my contact called me, and said I had XX,XXX of USDT to be transferred to my control.  After we exchanged addresses, and he sent me the funds in tether USDT, and my wallet now says I have XX,XXX amount of USDT received.

The problem now is, I can't seem to do anything with it.  Its on the ethereum network, and says I have tether USDT , but I cant seem to swap, send it, or cash it out.  The amount is greyed out on my transactions page of my coinbase wallet app, and the assets page says Zero funds.  I did add 10 dollars to my ethereum account to be able to mess around with it a bit trying to figure this out.

Is this a scam amount that isn't really there? Can someone explain I am very confused.

That's a scam. There is a trend that I have seen going around online called coinbase wallet loading and coin flashing. That is obviously what the person did to you.
 
Let me ask you: how did they do that? Did the person give you a smart contract address to add to your Coinbase wallet and import it? Because they have a specific smart contract for such a scam coin, you will need to manually enable it before it will show up on your Coinbase wallet, and once you have enabled it and they send the fund to you, it will be visible on the wallet only, but you can't swap or even send it out to another wallet, but still there will be value attached to it.

Well if you can simplify to beginner terms for me what your question is that would help me answer.  The person said they needed me to download coinbase app onto my pc or phone.  When I did that he asked for my new wallet address I think, and then he sent me some funds into it.  

I saw there was a transaction that was successful and then he told me to transfer the funds into my ethereum account.  Then I had an error on the app that said I don't have an ETH account.  So he was trying to explain to me I needed to create one, and then add additional funds into it to "enable" it or some jabber.  It was happening so fast I didn't understand what was going on.   He tried to tell me I had the money but its locked into the Tether USDT Ethereum network and to transfer to CAD I had to deposit some 3,000 dollars into another ethereum account to move it, the address he gave me from his end.....I dunno I said that makes no sense and sounds backwards to me. Add money so you can access it sounded like a scam to me.

And yes I can only see the USDT tether amount on the wallet only, not my assets page.  I found a tab somewhere looking up on my profile and showed up a list of assets.  The section was "Hide Assets" and said my 10 dollars or so of ETH in bright, then below had a line that said SPAM and a bunch of transactions apparently, and the bottom of the list was Tether for XX,XXX dollars.

I just later gave up to talking to the guy, and been ignoring him for a few days researching what was going on, and here I am.

Hope that makes some more sense.

OP, I just went over your follow-up response. I can confirm it was a scam attempt. Since you're just starting out in crypto, this should be a good lesson for you. I learned mine a long time ago, the hard way after which I came up with the conclusion that anything that sounds too good to be true is probably not true. If anyone tries to whine you about something of that nature, you should immediately dismiss it. As long as you didn't actively work for it or participate in a program to earn the crypto, there's simply no free money anywhere. Certainly not in crypto. Even airdrops these days require you to actively farm with Liquidity.

Welcome once more and stay safe. And oh, you should be using wallets like Rabby. It's automatically hides all scam tokens sent to your wallet so you don't even interact with it.

You are absolutely right - That REALLY sounds like a scam.  No legit company makes you send over money just to access whats already yours and  thats a textbook scam move, trying to squeeze out cash that youll never see again.  This sounds like a total fake USDT token, not the real deal.  You should know that anyone can create a token and call it whatever they want. But just because someone called their token USDT doesn't mean it is the real Tether (USDT)

Anyway, good call trusting your gut.  Dont let them fool you into handing over anything else.  

Thanks buddy for that reply, I feel I understand now what your saying and gonna make sure I pay even more attention to these scammers.

 ;) ;) ;)

That's good to know that you've ignored him already and might as well ban to your life so that he won't meddle with you anymore related to these concerns. Because he tried to scammed you already and that's a person not to be trusted. And if some tokens are greyed out on the scan or explorer upon checking them, they're totally useless, no value - nada, zilch, nothing. This is a common scam that many are being scammed for because they'll be asked to deposit just to get that money.

And a tip before you believe something is real is to check the contract address of that token and for that with USDT. You can easily verify it through websites like coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/
The contract address there for each token like USDT is posted there publicly.

Do you have any information about this person? Because I did not have to read the rest of your post to know that this is nothing but a scam.

First rule: do not talk to strangers. Especially strangers who tells you what to do. It is a common scam method that they tell you "you have won this  x amount send me your bank details" now they have switched to crypto wallets and exchanges.

Another rule you need to bear in mind when dealing with crypto is to never give your addresses to just about anyone. Or any kind of information from your wallet or exchange. For all you know they could be hacking you right now. Be careful next time

Scamming coins do exists in the market and we should always take thorough thoughts regarding these crypto projects. We have options to bring in our best to sealed up enormous profits for ourselves. Never place trust on anybody because the space contain quite good numbers of fraudulent activities and we hope we're on the safe path.

I remember a situation like that where some money went through the BSC network. That's where I have a wallet that I rarely use, and one time when I checked the BSCscan Explorer, I saw a lot of coins that entered that wallet. You can see its value; the size of the amount is around 200k$.

So, I was always surprised; I thought maybe it was the airdrops I had joined before. then what I did was I researched the token and looked for where it was listed, and I saw that it was on pancakeswap. When I was trying to take it out to convert it to our fiat, using pancakeswap, the amount of the fee requested was around 0.4 bnb. It said I don't know why it's so big, so that's when I thought about it, and I saw that it's just a scammer's trap to rob you of crypto via fee on Bnb, so they're really just fake altcoins. And the other thing is that when you go to the website and connect your wallet, if you do that, you will easily fall into the trap for sure, so beware of this style of scammer.

What an interesting scam. The point where anyone could have realized is when you were asked to deposit 3,000 dollars. And. It’s a good thing you realized it because scammers can be so convincing that people fall for it despite being obvious. When someone asks you to send money to any place just to unlock or have access to bigger or tempting funds, it’s 99.99% likely a scam. It’s just a bait and if you bite on it, you’ll be in trouble.

This is a scam attempt. Also, what about transaction fees? Did you send some ETH to the wallet for fees? Maybe that person is waiting for you to send some ETH to your wallet before attempting their next move. Also, after sending the 10 USDT to your Coinbase wallet, do you see it separately, or did it add to the previous amount which the person sent?

The red flag that pointed that it was a scam attempt was when the guy told the OP to deposit $3k to be able to claim the USDT, I'm glad that he didn't get greedy to fall for the trap. There are too many scams in the crypto space and people who are not knowledgeable about how cryptocurrency works will keep falling victims to these scammers. This is the reason why it's important for newbies to research and ask questions from experienced people and sources before connecting their wallets or sending their coins.

My question is that how did you added the $10 in other to access your balance and what was the total displayed balance in the ethereum wallet?
The only term that the asterisks of xxx or *** is to be shown on your Wallet display units is as a case of network errors so you'll need to close and reopen your wallet again as refreshing the page or you might have blunted it for Privacies but if it's non of it, then it's obviously a scam.

You are absolutely correct, it is a deceptive method of scammers to create fake tokens, send them to various wallets and steal fund from wallets through the smart contract of the token. In order to avoid such scams, always validate the contract address of the token on coinmaketcap or any any other platform before adding tokens to your wallet and interacting with suspicions websites.

You gat to, by not easily accepting or believing what someone has promised you about crypto. The crypto space is not as friendly as you thought. You have to be wise, and observant in your dealings with anyone in this space because many are just looking for who they will scam easily and go scot-free without being traced since crypto is mainly on anonymity(ID not always revealed).

To avoid the experience of scams, keep in mind no free money in crypto, don't invest in projects that promise huge returns of investment, and don't connect your main wallet to airdrop links

The nominal amount is interesting and large in my opinion, if it's a counterfeit coin of course in explorer it will be seen with the identification of token information because it is true that non-custodial wallets allow all types of tokens including contracts to be accommodated, proof that it can be accepted by cex for deposits is absolutely the original coin. your awareness in this case is good and maybe for the current incident I hope you will be more vigilant especially if you are sent funds just like that, personal data leaks may be the basis for fraudsters to trick the interlocutor, the easier it is to deploy a token including ethreum makes irresponsible people look for people to target their criminality. Hope you're doing well.

This is a typical scam, bro, and if possible, I will advise you to forsake that address and create a new one, depending on whether you are going to be using it as a cold or hot wallet. The Ethereum network is mostly used by scammers to send some fake tokens to different crypto wallets, and sometimes they do so as a plot to hack your wallet sooner or later. 

Some years ago, it became a trend that when you just create a new address and received a token, you will either see an unknown token on the Ethereum or BSC network sent to your wallet, and if you try to connect your wallet and swap the token on the DEX exchange where it is listed, your wallet may get hacked. Sometimes, too, after you connect your wallet to their DEX, any gas fee you send to that asset will be withdrawn by those hackers. 

People can easily create a token that has the same name and ticker symbol as another popular token. For a token as popular as USDT, you can check the wallet address where you received the tokens on Etherscan and it will show a blue checkmark if it is a legitimate token.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/06/22/hTh6w.jpeg (https://www.talkimg.com/image/hTh6w)

The tokens you received are probably a fake version of USDT, and the creator made it impossible to transfer the tokens so they could scam you by convincing you that you need to send them money first.

Sounds funny and dumb to me. So for you to have access to $10, you need to send the scammer $3000. This is the dumbest thing I have heard since I have being hearing of scams. OP, I am happy that from his statement you immediately understood that it is a scam. It is better to keep your $3000 and let him eat the $10 that you have sent to him. If you want to buy crypto, you should use an exchange for that and buy through p2p with your local currency instead of allowing someone to be playing you for a fool.

I've read some of the advice and suggestions of people but I will not call this a scam yet unless you prove it to be so because explanations could be confusing at times. First, ensure that it is the right Coinbase account you downloaded because that guy could have deceived you from the beginning. Second, try to contact Coinbase about this, I am sure they will have something to say. I can't be doing the back-and-forth question with you, but still, something could be missing, as a while ago, Coinbase asked a lot of users to move their funds away from it, but can still use the self-custody type. If you never moved the money that time, you might experience a thing like this, although I can't guarantee that since you still have access in your case but just can't do anything with the money.

However, before you go through the stress of contacting Coinbase for hope, why not ask the guy to furnish you with the transaction ID to start with?

The only challenge with this is that most people don’t even know. Not everyone knows the check the blockchain scan, and yet, understand what is really shown there. And that’s why many scammers succeed because there’s usually something that exposes them but may be unpopular to users.

It have been going on for years now and scammers never gets tired of sending scam tokens into peoples wallet so to have access to their wallets when they try to send it out or swap it. The crypto world is full scams we just have to open our eyes always be vigilant and be careful with how we interact with people. To avoid such scams of fake tokens we need to avoid any coins we see in our wallet without knowing how they got in or who sent them. Scammers are always trying to work smart but they can never out smart you if you don’t let them.

That doesnt sound like a scam but it is a real scam because it is one of the basic schemes that always happens and is always done by fraudsters, especially many beginners who do not realize that they are being deceived so even though this is a classic method, there are definitely those who are trapped by it.

This kind of thing does not need to be responded to and you better ignore it because if something like this is responded to then indeed you must be prepared with the worst possibility in the end.  I think for people who are on this forum almost all of them have gotten or experienced something like this although for those who already know for sure that this is one of the fraud schemes will not be tricked but there will be a lot of beginners who are sometimes quite naive because they get the lure of big profits they don't realize that it is a trap that ultimately destroys themselves.