Can someone send you fake Crypto into your wallet address that isn't there?

[EarnOnVictor]

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.

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?

[oktana]

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.



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.

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.

[Abbatty]

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. 

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.

[Furious 7]

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.