Obvious scam is obvious.
I don't think this scam is going to be all that obvious to a lot of newer users to Bitcoin.
Unless you are very familiar with how provable fairness works (or at least have a general understanding of it), then you will not understand why it would be a very bad idea for an already established casino to be offering a 1
BTC deposit bonus without any kind of (posted) rollover requirement. I would be willing to say there is a fairly good percentage of the people who regularly gamble on PD that do not understand this, let alone the general public.
Based on the posts that I have read, many people do not understand the business side of things when dealing with mining manufacturers, and why they are unlikely to offer their equipment at such a deep discount (they always have the option of simply mining on their own then slowly lower the price until their inventory sells).
Ironically, trezor offered a blackfriday special that is not all that more expensive then what the phishing site was offering. Other then the fact that people are being directed to a fake domain, I do not see any glaring red flags that this is a scam (
I can say 100% that it is a scam though). So unless you already know specifically what domain that trezor is selling their trezors on, and are paying close attention, then you will not realize this is a scam.
From what I can see, it appears that this scam was targeted largely towards newer, and less experienced users of Bitcoin. He also was using a good amount of advertising on the forum (and potentially elsewhere as well).
It is for these reasons that I believe I know who is behind this scam. Although the advertising was not exactly where I would expect this person to advertise, and the end result was not exactly what I would expect, then general MO does match this person and he would have the general ability to clone all those websites. If I am right about this, then this person's first name starts with a "D" and was in the US (more specifically California) last summer (based on US seasons - it was winter where he lives). I would need to consult with someone prior to making this claim with more certainty.
If I am incorrect about the above person being behind this scam, then this scam was almost certainly the work of moriartybitcoin. Actually now that I think about this a little bit more, I think the chances of this being moriartybitcoin actually might be greater then the person above.
I will need to find out the txid's of the forum advertisements and of the purchase of the account that ran the signature campaign. The
BTC in the signature campaign appears to be a dead end as it seems to have been funded via coinjoin transactions.
