How I Met My Scammer

[Lakai01]

Hi!

Practically every day, we read of cases where people get scammed, accounts are being hacked and far too many coins are getting stolen. Almost all of these successful attacks are simply based on the fact that most of us are far too lax with their own data and accounts, or simply too good-faith (or greedy ;-). In order to sharpen the awareness of the methods of the scammers out there, I thought we could launch the series "How I met my Scammer". It would be great if every (near) victim briefly describes the story of how he or she was scammed, so we all have the chance to learn from others mistakes and to recognize similar situations in the future - and don't fall for the scam.

I'm going to start ;-)

Late December 2017: The ripple hype is almost at its peak. I open up Twitter that day and go through the tweets. One tweet catches my eye: A blog known to me is giving away 1000 ripple to everyone who retweets and comments their the tweet. I do so immediately.

A short time later, I am contacted by "the blog" that I would have won. The joy was of course huge, so I did not realize that the Twitter account was faked ... To receive my prize I had to sign up on a portal where I had a wallet which would contain my prize. Said and done. Unfortunately, the wallet in this account was not initialized yet, so I should send 20 XRPs to activate it, which of course I do immediately.
And indeed: Suddenly my wallet was "activated". The scamer now told me the price was not 1000 XRP, but 100% of the amount I send to the wallet. So if I send 100 XRP, I get 200 XRP as a prize. Now the alarm bells finally rang. I blocked the user, closed Twitter, and cursed myself and my lost 20 XRPs, which were worth $60 at that time.

I am very looking forward to your stories now!

[1714165696]

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[Becassine]

Hi!

Practically every day, we read of cases where people get scammed, accounts being hacked and far too many coins are getting stolen. Almost all of these successful attacks are simply based on the fact that most of us are far too lax with their own data and accounts, or simply too good-faith (or greedy ;-). In order to sharpen the awareness of the methods of the scammers out there, I thought we could launch the series "How I met my Scammer". It would be great if every (near) victim briefly describes the story of how he or she was scammed, so we all have the chance to learn from the mistakes and to recognize similar situations in the future - and don't fall for the scam.

I'm going to start ;-)

Late December 2017: The ripple hype is almost at its peak. I open up Twitter that day and go through the tweets. One tweet catches my eye: A blog known to me is giving away 1000 ripple to everyone who retweets and comments their the tweet. I do so immediately.

A short time later, I am contacted by "the blog" that I would have won. The joy was of course huge, so I did not realize that the Twitter account was faked ... To receive my prize I had to sign up on a portal where I had a wallet which would contain my prize. Said and done. Unfortunately, the wallet in this account was not initialized yet, so I should send 20 XRPs to activate it, which of course I do immediately.
And indeed: Suddenly my wallet was "activated". The scamer now told me the price was not 1000 XRP, but 100% of the amount I send to the wallet. So if I send 100 XRP, I get 200 XRP as a prize. Now the alarm bells finally rang. I blocked the user, closed Twitter, and cursed myself and my lost 20 XRPs, which were worth $60 at that time.

I am very looking forward to your stories now!

Hi,

Unfortunately we can see such stories everywhere on the web and the common points is often greed ... There are many stories like that in this forum : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3490317.0

Greed and often when people give their private keys making an airdrop.

Each newbie should read this thread about security : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=935898.

[fraufreiheit]

Interesting (though sad) story, thank you for sharing. I believe that everyone should be brave enough to tell about scammers who stole their money, but so many victims are ashamed of being so naive. But we all need to know how exactly scammers work.

[XinXan]

Well to be honest, you got scammed by a pretty common and in my opinion shitty tactic. The fact that someone asks you for money to give you money should be a dead giveaway. If something is too good to be true, it probably isn't.

[Lakai01]

Hi,

Unfortunately we can see such stories everywhere on the web and the common points is often greed ... There are many stories like that in this forum : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3490317.0

Greed and often when people give their private keys making an airdrop.

Each newbie should read this thread about security : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=935898.

Thanks for your feedback! The main purpose of this thread is to collect such stories and share it at one place. Like a handbook of failures ;-)

[mk4]

And indeed: Suddenly my wallet was "activated". The scamer now told me the price was not 1000 XRP, but 100% of the amount I send to the wallet. So if I send 100 XRP, I get 200 XRP as a prize. Now the alarm bells finally rang. I blocked the user, closed Twitter, and cursed myself and my lost 20 XRPs, which were worth $60 at that time.

I am very looking forward to your stories now!

Ugh. That should've been obvious enough. It was too good to be true to start with, and it became a thousand times more obvious when they required you to deposit XRP to claim your prize. Well at least you learned your lesson for $60, which isn't too bad in my opinion. You could've lost more money if you were to learn about this in the future. I'd personally say it's a win.

[LTU_btc]

Oh, that wasn't smartest scammers I've ever say. It's obvious scheme which are used by Nigerian scammers, so called Advance-fee scam - they will give you millions but before that they will ask to pay more or less money to cover fees or sth. Luckily, you lost only $60, other people loosing thousand bucks by giving it to scammers. It always hurts to lose money, but at least you learned from mistake.
But nowadays scammers are making more sophisticated schemes which can attract much more victims and more profit to scammers. Newbies and even more experienced people must be extremely careful in crypto world before investing.

[OlaiyaSydney1]

Sorry for the loss and thanks for sharing. Others can share their experiences with scanners too, I think it would be enlightening. I also want to ask, some exchanges demand for private key before being able to trade or sign up , is this OKay?

[PsylockReborn]

Hi!

Practically every day, we read of cases where people get scammed, accounts being hacked and far too many coins are getting stolen. Almost all of these successful attacks are simply based on the fact that most of us are far too lax with their own data and accounts, or simply too good-faith (or greedy ;-). In order to sharpen the awareness of the methods of the scammers out there, I thought we could launch the series "How I met my Scammer". It would be great if every (near) victim briefly describes the story of how he or she was scammed, so we all have the chance to learn from the mistakes and to recognize similar situations in the future - and don't fall for the scam.

I'm going to start ;-)

Late December 2017: The ripple hype is almost at its peak. I open up Twitter that day and go through the tweets. One tweet catches my eye: A blog known to me is giving away 1000 ripple to everyone who retweets and comments their the tweet. I do so immediately.

A short time later, I am contacted by "the blog" that I would have won. The joy was of course huge, so I did not realize that the Twitter account was faked ... To receive my prize I had to sign up on a portal where I had a wallet which would contain my prize. Said and done. Unfortunately, the wallet in this account was not initialized yet, so I should send 20 XRPs to activate it, which of course I do immediately.
And indeed: Suddenly my wallet was "activated". The scamer now told me the price was not 1000 XRP, but 100% of the amount I send to the wallet. So if I send 100 XRP, I get 200 XRP as a prize. Now the alarm bells finally rang. I blocked the user, closed Twitter, and cursed myself and my lost 20 XRPs, which were worth $60 at that time.

I am very looking forward to your stories now!

Anything that you think is so good to be true is a possible scheme that will scam your money so stay away from those HYIP sites and other investments that could triple your money for surely it will take your investment down the drain.

[mithrim]

I guess everybody needs to get scammed at least once in his/her life in order to experience it firsthand. It has a cathartic effect and it (hopefully) helps you avoid further scamming attempts on your person. So all you can really hope for is that the first time isn't too bad, e.g. you lose enough money that it hurts (a little) but not that much that it cripples you 

[Insanerman]

Remember that there is no actually an easy money or bounty, their offer is clearly identified as a bait to scam people. Emphasizing the word "giving away" is synonymous to "airdrop" in other words a free money.

Why do we need to pay for them to receive an airdrop or a give away?

Well now you have your lesson. Learn from it.

[Huntsman82]

When you need to pay in order to get something for free that's the sign that something isn't right.
The best antivirus/anti scam/anti-anything is your brain.
Beating greed is the biggest challenge.

[wiser]

Thanks for sharing your story. I sent you some merit for it. I wish I could send *negative* merit to all those on this thread piling on with how you should have known better. I'm glad to see you treating this as a learning experience.

Here's my story. I got involved with Bitcoin a little over five years ago. Since money was really tight I couldn't buy much but I manged to earn little bits of it through faucets and sites that would pay you to complete simple tasks. I managed to amass about a half a BTC (at $90, so around $50 worth) in about six weeks. Then I came across this site called Mining United, which claimed that if you sent them some BTC, they would use it to mine more BTC and in four days send it back with what you'd earned mining. I knew nothing about mining or I would have been tipped off by the ridiculously high rate of return offered--25% in four days! My first batch came back as planned, so I put it back in, and then it never came back. I lost my entire cryptocurrency earnings. I still remember that icky feeling when I realized what happened.

The good that came out of it was I found this forum. My forum handle "wiser" came about because I sure hoped that with that experience under my belt I was now wiser. Unfortunately, as with pretty much anyone who shares their hard experiences with getting scammed on this forum, I got called an idiot by a bunch of know-it-alls, but I got past that and this is where I started to meet and network with really cool people and found projects where I could earn much more cryptocurrencies through writing and other things, and now I would say that overall I've done really well in the cryptocurrency industry.

I wish I could say that Mining United was my last experience with getting scammed, but sadly it wasn't. I've lost plenty through sites that got "hacked" and it wasn't always clear whether or not it was a legitimate outside theft or an inside job. I've also lost funds to ICOs and learned that about 97% of ICOs fail so I'm in good company.

I've learned a lot about what not to do, for sure. A really great resource on scam sites is thebadbitcoin.org. I also recently wrote about what sorts of things you should look for before investing in an ICO. I don't have experience with the messages that tell you to send a small amount of money in order to get a larger amount back, but I can see how one could make that mistake, thinking your wallet needs to be "activated." Once you learn how wallets work, it's easier to "smell a rat," but at the beginning it's really tough to sort it all out.

Thanks again for your courage in sharing your story, and I wish you much success in your ventures in the cryptocurrency industry

[paulmaritz]

Thank you for sharing. Sorry about your losses.

All of us lost money in the fiat Ponzi scheme - whether we like to admit it or not, but I haven't lost money in a crypto related scam yet. However, I got close to it years back. Memory serves me badly, but it was around 2013/2014 when I bought into a crypto project that I discovered on here. I cannot remember the name of the outfit, but they ran away with our money shortly after the ICO closed. I was not ready to accept it. I contacted them via email and demanded that they pay back all of the money. I gave them 24 hours to pay it back or I would get my friends at Interpol to trace and hunt them down like rabid dogs. Surprisingly enough, they did pay back the money. I am not sure it will work the next time around, but I was glad those scammers were scared and/or decent enough to do the right thing.

[wiser]

Scam ICOs are becoming enough of a problem to have attracted some high level attention. Here's one example:

https://www.howeycoins.com/index.html

Read through it, see if you can find the red flags, and then at the very end, click on the link to buy the coins (but you won't actually follow through with it), and have a good laugh.

[ferall]

The crypto world has always been a shady place where all sorts of vile people crawl out of the toilet.

Masternode is the new word for scam.

Trust nobody, especially on here.

[ferall]

Are the Nigerians getting so smart as to start scamming people out of their cryptocurrencies now? The day couldn't be too far I guess.

look at the lending forum, its reeks of 419 newbie scammers.

[silent_jay]

Had an unpleasant experience with Airdrop scum. I've got a link to an exclusive   high-necked Airdrope. Had to fill in the Google form and calmly wait for 50$. Before filling in the form, I've checked the company, of course and they seemed to be a big project, that was about to finish the airdrop. The Google form was enormous (20+ fields) and I have written there not only my personal wallet data, but also... PK! Yes, I was inexperienced and did it mechanically. I had no idea what a scum was. And, it is obvious now, that the form was fake. Naturally, I've lost almost  0,1 ETH and any desire to deal with Airdrops in the future. It's my fault, I know :-(. Had to be attentive and learn the experience of other people.

[wiser]

Had an unpleasant experience with Airdrop scum. I've got a link to an exclusive   high-necked Airdrope. Had to fill in the Google form and calmly wait for 50$. Before filling in the form, I've checked the company, of course and they seemed to be a big project, that was about to finish the airdrop. The Google form was enormous (20+ fields) and I have written there not only my personal wallet data, but also... PK! Yes, I was inexperienced and did it mechanically. I had no idea what a scum was. And, it is obvious now, that the form was fake. Naturally, I've lost almost  0,1 ETH and any desire to deal with Airdrops in the future. It's my fault, I know :-(. Had to be attentive and learn the experience of other people.

So these airdrop forms are actually asking for people's wallet private keys??? That's pretty low.

FYI, for everyone here, a private key is not needed in order to send funds to a wallet, only the public key, which is also known as the address. So if they are asking for a private key, at the very least they are asking for information they should not need in order to give funds away. They *would* need a private key in order to import the address and empty it of funds, though.

[cryptosec.info]

Had an unpleasant experience with Airdrop scum. I've got a link to an exclusive   high-necked Airdrope. Had to fill in the Google form and calmly wait for 50$. Before filling in the form, I've checked the company, of course and they seemed to be a big project, that was about to finish the airdrop. The Google form was enormous (20+ fields) and I have written there not only my personal wallet data, but also... PK! Yes, I was inexperienced and did it mechanically. I had no idea what a scum was. And, it is obvious now, that the form was fake. Naturally, I've lost almost  0,1 ETH and any desire to deal with Airdrops in the future. It's my fault, I know :-(. Had to be attentive and learn the experience of other people.

So these airdrop forms are actually asking for people's wallet private keys??? That's pretty low.

Yeah, and unfortunately a good amount of people actually fall for this for some reason. People always go straight to investing for "ez money", without even doing much thought and research on what the process is.