ALERT: Bitcoin Scam Modus Operandi

[ikhub]

This is an incident involving someone trying t scam me. I understood the modus operandi and thought of sharing with the community so that it may help someone in the same situation.
long story short
Came across a facebook post in a group by someone who says that he will send bitcoins first and then come to a deal.
Out of curiosity, I sent him a pm asking about the deal.
He said, I need to provide the user id and password of blockchain account, he will send me 1 BTC. After receiving it, I have to send him back 0.5 btc.
Smelling something fishy, and wanted to understand what the catch is, I created a new wallet in blockchain and sent him the credentials.
Within a few minutes he asked me to check balance.
OMG OMG I was surprised to see the wallet balance 1 BTC.
Now he asks me to send him 0.5 BTC back as the deal was.
Now I checked the transaction history of the wallet, it was not a "received' amount; It was a random address imported (without private key, "Watch Only") and the last transaction was dated a fortnight ago.
Since it was imported without the private key, the balance shows in the wallet, but I don't have access to the fund.
Anyone without understanding the situation might think that he received 1 btc and send him 0.5 btc (which would be deducted if he had balance).
Sharing this with others so that no one falls in this kind of trap, even if the amount is small.

[1715659786]

1715659786

[marlboroza]

I don't understand this topic.
Someone asked you password and wallet ID, you gave it to him and you are warning everyone not to do this?
Why would anyone share password and ID?
I just don't get it.

[burakdat]

These are the things why china ban the cryptpcurrency in thier country. A lot of chinese people involved in scam and that is according the news release within that country. This is how they work they involved in giving you btc and in return you have to give him btc as well. So if ever you are not techie about the btc you are receiving then probably you will send btc to that person and that is how they work. However, hacking bitcoin system may seem too complicated from its data decryption that could take many years before 1 btc to be cracked down. So BTC id more secure investment than any other investment. The only thing is thay these scammers had different kind of idea on scamming. So if ever someone has to offer good deals then do not forget that it may be related to scam.

[gantez]

I would say you are lucky not to finally lose your  money to that fraudster. Again, I would say you are smarter to have downloaded new wallet to send because if you had sent with your old wallet , perhaps you would have sent him the 0.5 he requested for after seeing the imaginary bitcoin.

[moneyangel]

Please think it many times that who this guy will give you a 1BTC and in returned you will give him a 0.5BTC. They are professional on that type of scam. I seen a lot at telegram channel but I never entertained them.
I never trust someone in the internet not unless they have a good reputation like in here in bitcointalk.

[bL4nkcode]

I encountered this so many times in my site and even in my youtube videos, people there asked me if how can they get a private key of watched only address, And I told them that's impossible and there's no way to that.

When I asked them what really happens and someone told me that she met a guy in facebook, and this guy told her that he will give her bitcoin/s in exchange with her blockchain's login details. The same with OP this guy imported a wallet address, obviously it became watch only address and he get the funds on that wallet too I guess its 0.005 IIRC.

That's why its so stupid that someone will give you some sort of free money in exchange of your wallet's login details. So stop believing it.

[Silent26]

I don't understand this topic.
Someone asked you password and wallet ID, you gave it to him and you are warning everyone not to do this?
Why would anyone share password and ID?
I just don't get it.

I think this topic is somehow helpful. Yes you're right, he gave his password and Wallet ID but it's a new wallet. It's just fine to send it to anyone since there's no bitcoin in it. It's just for testing if the person he encountered is really going to give him 1 Bitcoin. Luckily, he noticed that the bitcoin in his wallet is not received and just a fraud. He made this topic just to warn everyone, and it is a good idea.The lesson from this topic is, don't trust someone easily. Most of all are people from social medias. Because fraud is everywhere, just waiting for their right time to victim us.

[VitKoyn]

Well only people with poor thinking and people that don't have enough knowledge in cryptocurrency will be victimized by this. When someone ask for your private key or anything that can be use to access your Bitcoin wallet, that is enough reason not to transact with those people they will surely do nothing good. And also why would anyone will send you 1 Bitcoin and give him half of it after you receive it, if he can keep that 1 Bitcoin by himself? lol. No one with straight mind will give 1 Bitcoin for free without having anything valuable in exchange. This is a lesson that should everyone know especially those people that are just starting investing in cryptocurrency, never transact with other people without an escrow service because Bitcoin/cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.

[TravelMug]

Well only people with poor thinking and people that don't have enough knowledge in cryptocurrency will be victimized by this. When someone ask for your private key or anything that can be use to access your Bitcoin wallet, that is enough reason not to transact with those people they will surely do nothing good. And also why would anyone will send you 1 Bitcoin and give him half of it after you receive it, if he can keep that 1 Bitcoin by himself? lol. No one with straight mind will give 1 Bitcoin for free without having anything valuable in exchange. This is a lesson that should everyone know especially those people that are just starting investing in cryptocurrency, never transact with other people without an escrow service because Bitcoin/cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.

But there's still a lot of people who fall for this trap and its good that the OP has given us a warning about the said modus operandi. Lessons here is not to trust anyone, specially people you really don't know and just met online.

They are taking advantage of those people in the crypto that will jump because of the huge offer of 1 BTC, lest they know that they are going to be another statistics from those scammers out there.

So just be really careful, don't be greedy and used our common sense and not be a victim here. I myself have been scam in the beginning of my career in a HYIP, but since then I said that I will not be victimized again.

[milewilda]

Well only people with poor thinking and people that don't have enough knowledge in cryptocurrency will be victimized by this. When someone ask for your private key or anything that can be use to access your Bitcoin wallet, that is enough reason not to transact with those people they will surely do nothing good. And also why would anyone will send you 1 Bitcoin and give him half of it after you receive it, if he can keep that 1 Bitcoin by himself? lol. No one with straight mind will give 1 Bitcoin for free without having anything valuable in exchange. This is a lesson that should everyone know especially those people that are just starting investing in cryptocurrency, never transact with other people without an escrow service because Bitcoin/cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible.

But there's still a lot of people who fall for this trap and its good that the OP has given us a warning about the said modus operandi. Lessons here is not to trust anyone, specially people you really don't know and just met online.

They are taking advantage of those people in the crypto that will jump because of the huge offer of 1 BTC, lest they know that they are going to be another statistics from those scammers out there.

So just be really careful, don't be greedy and used our common sense and not be a victim here. I myself have been scam in the beginning of my career in a HYIP, but since then I said that I will not be victimized again.

This is the sad truth where theres still people who do fall out these kind of scams specially for those people who do lack of knowledge together with their greediness will really result into such loss.Checking on the situation above its really involve on technical aspects even a newbie would really be still confused and would easily fall to the trap that he do recieve 1 btc and yet it is just imported watch-only wallet then you will really able to see the balance.If you dont have 0.5 btc balance then you did actually follow his instruction and sent out 0.5 and then fail then you are lucky.

[batang_bitcoin]

And also why would anyone will send you 1 Bitcoin and give him half of it after you receive it, if he can keep that 1 Bitcoin by himself?

That's the logic, easy to understand and I don't know why they are needing other people just to do this shady transaction.

I encountered this so many times in my site and even in my youtube videos

I've seen on a certain freelancing group on facebook that there are alike offers.
Good warning to all, just don't be greedy and don't fall for people who are saying "I'll give you, XXX amount and send XXX back to me." Don't believe them.

[shi07]

If a deal is too good to be true then it probably is. Anyone here who have been using blockchain somehow understands when a transaction is legit or not. Don't get easily fooled with this kind of offers. Besides who would give a .5 btc that easily? Beware of scammers, they are the one who gives negative impression of btc.

[BluberryBTC]

It's a clever scam but I don't think anyone will hand over a wallet with any funds in it. If they do then they shouldn't be owning any bitcoin to begin with.

Also nothing is free. People don't give free things out of the 'goodness of their hearts'.

[glowing10]

It's a clever scam but I don't think anyone will hand over a wallet with any funds in it. If they do then they shouldn't be owning any bitcoin to begin with.

Also nothing is free. People don't give free things out of the 'goodness of their hearts'.

It is not at all clever, it is like asking your id and password of the bank details and you are providing him. On the first place itself you will not provide and in the same way why will anyone should or will provide the id and password of their personal wallet? This itself is the real cause of the problem and thus those scammers get succeed due to the ignorance or blindly trusting the people.

[BluberryBTC]

It's a clever scam but I don't think anyone will hand over a wallet with any funds in it. If they do then they shouldn't be owning any bitcoin to begin with.

Also nothing is free. People don't give free things out of the 'goodness of their hearts'.

It is not at all clever, it is like asking your id and password of the bank details and you are providing him. On the first place itself you will not provide and in the same way why will anyone should or will provide the id and password of their personal wallet? This itself is the real cause of the problem and thus those scammers get succeed due to the ignorance or blindly trusting the people.

Let me re-phase;

It's clever compared to the usual, "Hello, I'm a nigerian prince, plz send money" scam that I have seen a few of on this forum.

[andrei56]

Thanks for the description op of the scam but while I value the service, you took a great risk,the best way to avoid being scammed is to simply stay away from scammers do not listen to them, while I have never being scammed I understand very clearly they know their scam very well and that if I tried to be smarter than them I am the only one that is going to be hurt by it.

[audaciousbeing]

There is way we can get enough of all these scams because they are just getting smarter to wipe funds people have worked to build and I am very sure a lot of people would have fallen for this type of scam. I must admit this is the first time I am hearing this form of scam and I think Op is even smart to have opened a new wallet to try it out such a "good deal" is something that does not come every time.

But for this who fell of the scam, I think its out of greediness because there is no way you should send from your own wallet rather from the one he sent which is not going to happen. I guess they would have been told they have to wait for a while before they would be able to spend only to realise when its too late. One word, when you are not sure, don't bother to dig deep nothing is free around here.

[erickkyut]

Thank you for sharing this to the community. It is the first time I've encountered such scam strategy. The scammers really had evolved. They will do everything just to scam others and get their hard earned money. It is such a pity that they don't know how to fight fair in life. I hope that they will change their mind and heart and they will not get the worst karma out there.

[Zadicar]

Thank you for sharing this to the community. It is the first time I've encountered such scam strategy. The scammers really had evolved. They will do everything just to scam others and get their hard earned money. It is such a pity that they don't know how to fight fair in life. I hope that they will change their mind and heart and they will not get the worst karma out there.

Nothing to be surprised of which scammers will really evolve no matter what as the trend on making money increased and if people already find out their techniques on scamming they will evolve into something unique that nobody able to see it.I have seen already in social medias about this wallet or btc being given by someone and newbie person easily fooled out that they do really own that btc.This is a new way of scamming where if you let yourself blinded with that amount then you know the consequences.

[Nhor1011]

      Scammers are so smart,they have different strategies how to convince people to go in their net. And if you are not aware you will surely fall. Well, thanks for sharing this,because evreyone now will become carefull enough and always don't trust to anyone to avoid scam.

[ecnalubma]

This is an incident involving someone trying t scam me. I understood the modus operandi and thought of sharing with the community so that it may help someone in the same situation.
long story short
Came across a facebook post in a group by someone who says that he will send bitcoins first and then come to a deal.
Out of curiosity, I sent him a pm asking about the deal.
He said, I need to provide the user id and password of blockchain account, he will send me 1 BTC. After receiving it, I have to send him back 0.5 btc.
Smelling something fishy, and wanted to understand what the catch is, I created a new wallet in blockchain and sent him the credentials.
Within a few minutes he asked me to check balance.
OMG OMG I was surprised to see the wallet balance 1 BTC.
Now he asks me to send him 0.5 BTC back as the deal was.
Now I checked the transaction history of the wallet, it was not a "received' amount; It was a random address imported (without private key, "Watch Only") and the last transaction was dated a fortnight ago.
Since it was imported without the private key, the balance shows in the wallet, but I don't have access to the fund.
Anyone without understanding the situation might think that he received 1 btc and send him 0.5 btc (which would be deducted if he had balance).
Sharing this with others so that no one falls in this kind of trap, even if the amount is small.

Just don't deal with that kind of people and never trust anyone, crypto is more valuable than money itself and attracts a lot of criminals in space. These lazy people will not stop, its very shameful that they do it for a living while laughing at their victims. As our technology becoming more advance they also upgrade their schemes, so always beware co'z they're everywhere.

[el kaka22]

I would say you are lucky not to finally lose your  money to that fraudster. Again, I would say you are smarter to have downloaded new wallet to send because if you had sent with your old wallet , perhaps you would have sent him the 0.5 he requested for after seeing the imaginary bitcoin.

Investors behavior is gradually changing towards ICOs, most are becoming smarter than before to know how to dig properly on a project before investing and not just do that blindly, so over time, we will definitely be seeing lesser ICOs with solid projects, and the new investors having the community to guide them in case they have no idea how things work.

The usual presale pattern though is changing like the OP mentioned, and we may get to a point, when big projects will rather look for big guys during presale who may have huge amount to invest while the common man wait to see if they have a chance for public sale.

[setupbounds]

This explains why someone sent a Bitcoin to my friend and he wasn’t able to make use of it. Well, he wasn’t scammed… the person just sent him Bitcoin as a token, but he wasn’t able to use it, it was just a watch only. He tried sending it to someone else but he couldn’t send it, it kept on telling him that he doesn’t have any funds in his wallet.

Thanks for the info. I know no one would be stupid as to give out their wallet ID and password, but some people are stupid, trust me. Don’t mind those claiming to be wise.

[jason meneses]

Just be careful to the people if you dont know..  If he or she offer you good.  Just try to ask your friends our someone who knows..  Now aday there's so many scammer ther have aiedrop but is fake just want to scum and others they run if the coin our sell..  And create nyo airdrop..

[robotrobert]

This is an incident involving someone trying t scam me. I understood the modus operandi and thought of sharing with the community so that it may help someone in the same situation.
long story short
Came across a facebook post in a group by someone who says that he will send bitcoins first and then come to a deal.
Out of curiosity, I sent him a pm asking about the deal.
He said, I need to provide the user id and password of blockchain account, he will send me 1 BTC. After receiving it, I have to send him back 0.5 btc.
Smelling something fishy, and wanted to understand what the catch is, I created a new wallet in blockchain and sent him the credentials.
Within a few minutes he asked me to check balance.
OMG OMG I was surprised to see the wallet balance 1 BTC.
Now he asks me to send him 0.5 BTC back as the deal was.
Now I checked the transaction history of the wallet, it was not a "received' amount; It was a random address imported (without private key, "Watch Only") and the last transaction was dated a fortnight ago.
Since it was imported without the private key, the balance shows in the wallet, but I don't have access to the fund.
Anyone without understanding the situation might think that he received 1 btc and send him 0.5 btc (which would be deducted if he had balance).
Sharing this with others so that no one falls in this kind of trap, even if the amount is small.

I honestly doubt. There would still be some anyway, but we should not be expecting too much. It seems most ICOs prefer going the whale-ish ways since at least they would see the market controlled to some extent rather than having some small owners play dump on the market as they like. Just my own assumptions anyway, or the way I see it, and I may be wrong. Pre-sales may end up going into extinction pretty soon for the general public.

[tienigarazz]

Thats the reason why some people are not interested in bitcoin, although it is starting to become popular. If you want to not get scam, just read first what is bitcoin (if you are a newbie). Then think first before you do something, always be wise in all of your decision. We cannot eliminate those scammers, but we can avoid them. So always becareful.

[neonshium]

These are the things why china ban the cryptpcurrency in thier country. A lot of chinese people involved in scam and that is according the news release within that country. This is how they work they involved in giving you btc and in return you have to give him btc as well. So if ever you are not techie about the btc you are receiving then probably you will send btc to that person and that is how they work. However, hacking bitcoin system may seem too complicated from its data decryption that could take many years before 1 btc to be cracked down. So BTC id more secure investment than any other investment. The only thing is thay these scammers had different kind of idea on scamming. So if ever someone has to offer good deals then do not forget that it may be related to scam.

The point the OP is making here is actually different and it is not generally about altcoins but ICO pre-sale. I have noticed this too recently, as we get to see some project going with the style of targeting the whales during presale. I really do not know why, but at the end, probably they prefer some group of whales occupying the huge position in the market like someone rightly said.

ICOs will always be as long as there are projects and innovations, but the presale thing for the public is gradually turning to something private.

[yojodojo21]

I have been into this kind of scenario many times. I have been talking to several people on telegram related to crypto currency, and i received a lot of Private message asking that if i am an investor, but i'm not that too foolish to be hooked by that kind of trick, Everytime i experience this i always make a proof to it. Screenshot would be the best evidence tho. and then i will report to any groups with the screenshot pics, and guess what, those filthy scammers instantly change their name and Profile pic but not too wise, to change the conversation i have screenshot. so better to have evidence to any accusations for them to be known as scammer to others, but the best thing is to ignore. don't be fool nothing is free, especially crypto with the amount of 1 Btc. LOL.

[GregH37]

I don't understand this topic.
Someone asked you password and wallet ID, you gave it to him and you are warning everyone not to do this?
Why would anyone share password and ID?
I just don't get it.

Yeah, we cannot really know the future, but from the trend that is going on now, I have seen some ICOs going big during pre-sales and looking for the big guys instead. And then you just get to see after the ICO that a lot has already been generated and just very little to go around to the public in that case. It is becoming glaring now that private sales are becoming available only for the big guys that have a lot to offer.

[pingpangboy]

This is Trending Incident that what we have seen in daily transactions as bitcoin exists in daily life as bitcoin hiked the price according to the crypto we at http://8views.orgBTC beware of those fraudulent transactions . .

[Millennium_blue]

I hear this for the first time.A terrible fraud. :/

[Name: Claudio]

I was also confuse a little bit with the OP's topic, I hope he could elaborate more what happen or he can make the statement like a conversation style so we could understand it clearly.

As for the advice sending amount of BTC to someone and he promised to returned it in double, it is really fishy!!

[jeronimosuykens]

Thanks for the description op of the scam but while I value the service, you took a great risk,the best way to avoid being scammed is to simply stay away from scammers do not listen to them, while I have never being scammed I understand very clearly they know their scam very well and that if I tried to be smarter than them I am the only one that is going to be hurt by it.

We should consider all our actions. Because small mistakes lead to many consequences. Especially they will affect the community. And when there are bad signals the report immediately to the community. First, get them notified. Secondly, someone may be able to support themselves with difficulties.