Bitcoin Forum

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=330676

"Administrator Hero Member" ;D. Looks like he might've tried a scam judging by the feedback left, but I doubt he'll fool anyone  :D.

*facepalm* That's like the fifth new fake admin account I've seen registered this month.

Haha Good find.
Let's start directing forum questions to him and see how much he like the job then.  :D

how the heck you found that guy out so fast?   just curious


Dont worry they gonna probably copy your name also.  you will be famous.

It seems btw very common to make a typo username, for example with an extra `, whenever there is an auction (for example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=570030.msg6425099#msg6425099 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=594692.msg6622966#msg6622966)

Decent chance this "theyrnos" is PM-ing people that entered the forum ads auction. PMs them to say they won the auction, just send the BTC to ...

Unfortunately I have seen successful attempts (like 1 BTC in that second topic I linked.)

I feel sorry for the people that will be scammed by this account. There is not much that I can do, except -rep'ing the guy. Which is what I just did.

I must say this name really looks like admins especially for those with bad vision the "rn" converge into m, But what's the point of making name like this? To send pm's asking for password or something like that?

I was just having a look to see if anyone had left feedback for UpDown.bit yet and saw he'd left feedback on the account.

Maybe they'll try 'mrprep'? I think I thought that was his name at first.


Sneaky. I guess that could work. On first glance the pm could look legit if you didn't click onto his profile, but I guess you'd likely see the 0 posts/activity beforehand.

Theymos isn't the only person they are trying to impersonate, and I ban such accounts almost every day, if you see them, or if they PM you, report them ("Report to moderator" or "Report To Admin" if it's a PM).

low level criminals make me laugh.. at least until they are successful at tricking gullible people.

It's actually pretty easy to find them as well: just search for members witht the phrase "they" (without quotes) and almost every 4th account is an impersonator.

Any way to report them if you didn't receive the PM?

Like: SWC-Mastodon > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=332354 (real has _ instead of -)

From this auction: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=607640.0

PM one of the mods.

There are auctions and other such related things going on. So if a person who's name is similar to admin's he can ask them BTC and all. He can make money by sending some fake PMs.
Examples : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=594692.msg6622966#msg6622966 | https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=665923.0 .

Kindly,
     MZ

The username does look very similar to "theymos", and so whenever you receive a PM, you should pay attention not only to the username but also to the activity and trust score. You should be able to notice the problem very easily then. :)

If you were to receive a PM from this account it should be overwhelmingly obvious that he is not an admin considering this is a brand new account that had never posted, has no avatar and has no admin title.

I would almost say that anyone who gets scammed by someone like this almost deserves to get scammed.

Yeah, thats me that got scammed in 2nd link ::) I was new to the forum, good lesson learned. I simply never go first now  ;)

one of them have already scam 3btc. very creative lol  ;D he could be the same person

Why they gave him negative trust, he doesn't have any post so far?

He attempted to scam via PM. Sometimes users get 'nuked' as well which removes all of their posts. And negative trust can be given out as a preemptive measure before a scam attempt when there's a good chance that's what they're planning to do.

I usually try to give negative trust for pm scams like that, because while I can ban them and remove posts, we can't do anything about sent pm's.

That's why I suggested this a while back:


Just highlighting the message in the dropdown list would do the trick.

The only true protection against such people is to keep your common sense. These kind of trolling/impersonation is so awkward I really don't think anyone with more than 80 IQ will be fooled. And if you got caught it is your own fault.

These scammers can be tricky sometimes, do not ever think you are smarter then them. Be allways carefull, even when you think you are dealing with someone you know. And allways listen to your gut, if it feels phishy, just say no. I have done plenty of trades via steam and only one legit customer was repeled because I was to carefull.

You must be very inattentive to fell for scam for this user, you just check his rank, that's all.

While I agree that it shouldn't be hard to tell it is an impersonator, I see no problem in Cyrus' suggestion.
It shouldn't be hard to implement, and it offers an additional layer of protection to less attentive people. :)