Bitcoin Forum

There is a scam going on and I was shocked when I saw it and believe me you  can also be a victim if you are not careful and is all about sending Bitcoin to a recipient and the amount of coin will show in the wallet making you believe is a smooth transaction  and sender will ask for your wallet address and sending you screenshots while sending it and it will reach a process where they will say a network fee/Ethereum required to complete the transaction and this is where you don't know and can be fooled to help send the amount of Ethereum needed and once you send you don't receive it and the person end up blocking you and it has been going viral and is hard for you to escape it cause the person claiming to send it will be on his knees and begging and telling you he have no other coin else here to process the transaction so you have no option than to help and you end up been scammed thinking you are helping to get a coin for business purposes. We need to be careful and be alert

This isn't a new scam and only the truly stupid would fall for it today if you browse scam & accussations board especially in 2018 2019 you'll find dozens of threads featuring Tinder girls by the way are almost all your punctuation keys not working?

A very old scam that came in all these year with veru slight changes but the concept is same, send you crypto and when you try to withdraw there will be verification fee where you need to send bitcoin to complete it and while you send there will be more verification to deposit more money until the victim realized that he got scammed.

This can of attack is only possible when the victim is using a compromise wallet. It is important to verify the authencity of a wallet Before starting to hold your crypto currency in such a wallet. Some wallets may have a payload with malicious intent to steal or some sort of database were the hackers can be able to manipulate any users account at there own end. So for security purposes and to avoid this kind of scam we should download wallet that is trusted and verified.

Holy hell.  This post was incredibly hard to read.

OP, this sounds like almost any scam in the financial world, even Fiat scams are similar to it.  You get burnt in the first step and then they try to keep burning you slowly until you finally give up.  Nothing new and I am very surprised at the amount of people STILL getting scammed this way.

But then some people are still getting scammed by a Nigerian prince.  Sometimes you really have to not be stupid to avoid the scams.

What we should first ask our self if such occurs is the reason for someone requesting for our wallet address to send us some coins, secondly, if they are truly reliable and know what they are doing, they shouldn't be claiming of high transaction fee when they are the sender, its something they could have checked the mempool before making the transaction, lastly, the mempool is not even congested as we have been having some times back then, so we shouldn't be tricked at all, except if we are newbie and don't know how the network runs.

This isn't a new scheme, like the many others I've heard and experienced my self. The most popular one is that which a wallets seedphrase is sent to you with a lot of coins inside, and they claim that they want to sell the coins or transfer if that you can take some part of the coins if you are able to pay for the fees.

Unfortunately you are not going to be able to access the coins because they gave you a multi signature wallet which requires two signature for the coins to be sent. There are many other as well, but we have to be careful regardless.

This are old scam, even in Facebook i saw people asking for gas fee and ended up just asking a lot of people and accumulate a lot from asking, this types of scam are everywhere and will not go away since there are still some people who fall for this kind of trick.
They would even extend to be your friend and get closer slowing letting your guard down, and lend them small then next a bit bigger and the last will be the big one, after that they will disappear, and you will not know it until you realized they were just luring you to a bigger deal.

This kind of scam isn't new. In fact, a few posts were already created explaining the exact method which scammers use in the past. Unfortunately until this very day, lots of newbies alike are being scammed in a somehow easy-to-fall to scam like what you explained OP.

As a rule of thumb, never ever trust a stranger when it comes to transactions. If someone randomly messages you asking for assistance in their withdrawals, take it as a red flag and ignore it. If someone also randomly messages you saying that you won "xxx" amount of coins, forget it. There is nothing free in this world but our plain ignorance that would lead to us being scammed.

So OP, take this as a learning experience and move on. It's nice that you created this post for awareness but majority of the scams can be avoided if everyone would be vigilant and responsible.

Man I almost gave up! OP only used two full stops to finish his entire post. I had to bring out my glasses and read it several times.The concept of this scam seems somewhere similar to honeypot scams! I could be be wrong though. I had hard time reading OP's nonstop texts.

I believe I have heard of this scam before. Scammer would pretend to be a newbie at social media site and ask for help from others in order to withdraw the funds. He would also show screenshots of massive balances and offer to reward whoever helps him. If they try to help, they'll notice there is no gas fee. And then the scammers would ask them to take care of it from their own pocket as he (scammer) doesn't know how and later would compensate him (real person). But all of us knows that ain't happening. Real person sends the gas fee and later gets blocked. End of story...CMIIW.

A called it not a new scam but there are millions of people out there that don't have knowledge in it and will fall

Truly this is an old scam for the oldies who have been into the system for quite a long time and if they call it so agree with them because they have more knowledge and information coupled with the experience in the industry. You are just a newbie here and it might look totally new to you and some others who have no knowledge about it and are hearing it for the first time.

I will also commend your efforts because it also still can serve as a reminder to everyone but but not a new thing though. As for your OP it seems so lengthy that I barely see any punctuation marks to separate words and sentences. You just have to improve on your punctuation usage.

You asking the op if all his punctuation keys aren't working is also faulty yourself..
Read your post again, shouldnt there be a comma(,) between "today" and "if ", as well as between "Tinder girls" and "by the way"?

Like for example, your post should be like this...

Just don't accept free money from strangers. It's not that hard.

Ever heard of "stealing candy from a baby"?

Sometimes greed gets in the way of common sense not ignorance so no specific knowledge is required

My bad,,,,, mine sometimes doesn't work, sometimes multiple clicks......
will be fixed..... ;)

So what if I told you it's very easy to avoid this kind of scams, because it's actually not everybody who claims to beg or cry online for insufficient transfer fees you should believe for your own safety. Because scammers will always be scammer looking for vulnerable victims to scam. And greed or the quest to want to get rich overnight is a major reason why I think many people fall victim to this type of scam. Hence, as a Bitcoin investor, it is wise to be always alert for situations like this.

This reminds me of this thread: /index.php?topic=5560930.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5560930.0)
OP claimed that a "family member" purchased some wrapped bitcoin in ETH network but cannot spend it since he doesn't have any ETH.
That person told him that he doesn't receive the ETH that OP sent which started from £2 to something higher.

So @Harmond8897! if you're reading this, if you lied about the second-person being your family member or there's no third-party involved, you may have been scammed.
(I'll link this thread to my last reply)

r/whoosh

Anything too good to be true online is a scam, no one will come and want to send you money for free, and if you are offering a service or in a business, you don't send money to recieve money.

All these are old scam attempts. Anything that will put you in a sense of losing money either in a service,business or the likes should be verified and only done through trusted parties/platforms officially.

It is greed that makes people get scammed. People like free and get rich quick scheme and these are the things scammers useto get their victims. They would put up an enticing offer to their target audience knowing fully well that there must be some greedy ones who would fall for their tricks and that is how they get them.

Why on will someone want to reap from where they did not sow. Looking for a 100x return so fast when you you have nothing to put in for that kind of return. Ordinarily hearing such a return, one should quickly know what is coming and run away quickly because such is nothing but a scam.

I would ask the same question to you as well.  ;D


It's an old-school scamming method, which I believe is still being used by some dumb scammers to scam users who are even dumber than those scammers for falling into such things. I can't help but wonder what the thought process of a person must be when they receive a message online offering them a great investment opportunity and then even spending their time guiding them walking them through the process, and they would also say that they aren't going to have any benefits from it, lol. One should ask, why did you find a message and want to help me make a lot of money if there is absolutely no benefit in it for you?

Still, some people fall for it. Ironic! :)

This scamming strategy might look new to some people but trust me it's a old strategy that most scammers have been using to scam people in this crypto space. But I must say that this information is still valid because there are alot of newbies here who have not encounter similar thing before so they will have to learn from this experience. However this scamming strategy is even more simple than the once they're implementing now so we all need to be careful to avoid being a victim.

This has been a scamming strategy for a while now, people now know about it and are not more falling victim to it, only people that are new to crypto will fall victim of these scam or people who never know abut the scam.

The question I always ask is that why should I even have something to do with a scammer that will lead to sending and receiving of Bitcoin? If I want to buy Bitcoin, I have centralized exchanges to buy from and then send to my personal wallet, if I want to withdraw I equally know how to do that too then what business should join me with any scammer?

I believe all these scams are been initiated when a scammer get a greedy newbie that will be willing to receive a huge money from the scammer, and the scammer will demand for network fee and then work away with it which is for small scammers.

This sounds ridiculous and this will only make one even want to doubt if this is actually happening to people because it looks very fishy from the very beginning. Even if you fail to realize the first time and send a verification fee to them to withdraw the bitcoin, how comes you fall victim the second time again and continue until you realize you’re scammed. It doesn’t looks connecting, but since it already happened to people, then it’s actually a scam that do happen and newbies should take more note of it because they’re most likely to fall victim of it.

Sending bitcoin then asking for a gas fee (Ethereum)?

I think that those who are not aware that these two are different cryptocurrencies are going to fall for it. If someone is aware of it, they're not going to be that far for the scammer to have that momentum in asking for a gas fee so that they can proceed.

And by the time that the scammer asks for more withdrawal fees, that's how it goes and already a red flag that it's a total scam.

But it happens all the time, ever heard of the word 'Pig Butchering'?

This is it, they will just try to make as much money from someone by tricking into an excuse and creating confusion and frustration and don't let them to think about anything else, which result in them into lose money on many occasions that just kept growing until the person realizes they are being scammed.

I guess OP is reffering to Wrapped btc [WBTC] in Ethereum network. Other than that, this scam process method is impossible on the Bitcoin network.

OP, as explained in previous replies, this is an old renewed method because there are no ways to fight it but the awarness of crypto users about difference between networks.
In the other side, scammers have to spend long time convincing victims to send tiny amount to the trap address (50 victims with 2$ each to collect 100$). You can imagine how much time this would consume, but this doesn't reduce its importance as a scam plan to stay away from.

Only greedy people will fall victim. Never believe in free/easy money.

Wrapped bitcoins (WBTC) are tokens, not coins.

Definition of tokens. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2251834.0)
What is the difference between a coin and a token? (https://support.coinmarketcap.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018692892-What-is-the-difference-between-a-coin-and-a-token)

Tokens including Wrapped bitcoin tokens CAN NOT operate independently and their token operations depend on blockchains on which their wrapped tokens were deployed. If those blockchains have technical issues or stop working, those wrapped tokens will be dead.

Another risk of wrapped tokens is their token pegs to bitcoins, Ethereum, BNB for example and pegs can be lost. Holding Wrapped bitcoin tokens has risk of witnessing its value falling to $0 if peg is lost.

Reading OP story its classic scamming way did by scammer have running for longer time since I know cryptocurrency around 2016 many time the scammer sent me wallet but need fees for withdrawing assets in that wallet. Most of scam wallet ask Ethereum fees or some time have wallet with USDT fund using TRC network and we must deposit TRC coin recovering fees if want withdraw all USDT fund.
It must be remembered, don't be tempted by someone who easily gives us a wallet with a balance of up to $100 or even $1000 for free and we must deposit fees for withdrawing all fund, its clearly scam because the wallet have set up bot automatically sending fees fund to set up wallet by scammer. For right now I think this way scamming have popular all people know well with this method, I can't believing nowadays have many people easily got scam with this way sending fees for withdrawing fund in that wallet.

It is very important warning of most popular scam, Fake Transaction Fee, which cheats people by claiming to have deposited large amount of money, but then tricks them, that they must first send small fee, usually in another currency such as Ethereum, to have money freed. This is scam that mixes up and uses feelings such as begging to make people ignore simple truth of real transaction sender always pays fee and you should never have to pay money to get money. When someone asks you to pay fee to incoming transfer, it is scam, and you should stop right away and be careful.

I believe that whenever the victim attempts to send the network fees requested by the scammer, then he is told that the transaction has not yet been completed, convincing them to send more funds, until they eventually discover that all their fees and funds completely drained without receiving anything..

You can imagine how effective this method was in the past; it was extremely profitable for scammers. I don't think the scammer is satisfied with stealing just $100; he often make much larger amounts, as the number of greedy people is endless,, and many of them believe the scammer’s lies and keep trying, thinking the transaction will go through the next time.

Greed is the greatest enemy of anyone in this field. Anyone chasing free money or believing easy promises will inevitably become a victim of fraud one day...

Yes i can resume the difference bitcoin a token and a cryptocurrency. The method of scam mentioned in OP can't be done with bitcoin in its main network, while it can be done wihin the ethereum blockchain using any token developped at top of the it.

The way scammers are going round now,, it’s very important for us to be very careful so that we won’t fall victim to them. Because they are always doing research on how they can get access to people's wallets, and once they get access to a wallet, it will be very hard to escape from them since they will make sure they change all of our wallet handles.

Because even common P2P now is not like before again, as the scammers have also occupied it. If a person is not wise enough, the vendors will just send the fake receipt and ask you to release the coin, and if you don’t check the transaction before releasing the coin, you will just fall into their hands.