Be Aware of Scams as Crypto prices goes up!

[adi1972]

Since last year prices dive, many scams also exited causing a double whammy to victims. As prices starts to pick up, expect another round of scamming to surface soon enough.

Below is and article about crypto scamming that occured previously. Only knowledge can prevent us from getting scammed.

Original article here: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/cryptocurrency-bitcoins-scams-crime-fraud-investors-lose-billion-11534842

Commentary: How are investors still falling for cryptocurrency scams?
By Nir Kshetri, Channelnewsasia

One scam cryptocurrency founder defrauded investors billions by convincing others that their nonexistent cryptocurrency was real, Nir Kshetri at University of North Carolina-Greensboro points out.

GREENSBORO, North Carolina: Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money.
In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion. The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains.
From researching blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybercrime, I can see that some cryptocurrency fraudsters rely on tried-and-true Ponzi schemes that use income from new participants to pay out returns to earlier investors.
Others use highly automatised and sophisticated processes, including automated software that interacts with Telegram, an internet-based instant-messaging system popular among people interested in cryptocurrencies.
Even when a cryptocurrency plan is legitimate, fraudsters can still manipulate its price in the marketplace.
An even more basic question arises, though: How are unsuspecting investors attracted to cryptocurrency frauds in the first place?

FAST-TALKING SWINDLERS
Some cryptocurrency fraudsters appeal to people’s greed, promising big returns. For example, an unknown group of entrepreneurs runs the scam bot iCenter, which is a Ponzi scheme for Bitcoin and Litecoin. It doesn’t provide information on investment strategies, but somehow promises investors 1.2 per cent daily returns.
The iCenter scheme operates through a group chat on Telegram. It starts with a small group of scammers who are in on the racket. They get a referral code that they share with others, in blogs and on social media, hoping to get them to join the chat.
Once there, the newcomers see encouraging and exciting messages from the original scammers. Some newcomers decide to invest, at which point they are assigned an individual bitcoin wallet, into which they can deposit bitcoins. They agree to wait some period of time – 99 or 120 days – to receive a significant return.
During that time, the newcomers often use social media to share their own referral codes with friends and contacts, bringing more people into the group chat and into the investment scheme.
There’s no actual investment of the funds in any legitimate business. Instead, when new people join, the person who recruited them gets a percentage of the new funds, and the cycle continues, paying out to earlier participants from each round of newer investors.
Some members work especially hard to bring in new funds, posting tutorial videos and pictures of themselves holding large amounts of money as enticements to join the scam.

LIES AND MORE LIES
Some scammers go for straight-up deception. The founders of scam cryptocurrency OneCoin defrauded investors of US$3.8 billion by convincing people their nonexistent cryptocurrency was real.
Other scams are based on impressing potential victims with jargon or claims of specialised knowledge. The Global Trading scammers claimed they took advantage of price differences on various cryptocurrency exchanges to profit from what is called arbitrage – simply buying cheaply and selling at higher prices. Really they just took investors’ money.
Global Trading used a bot on Telegram, too – investors could send a balance inquiry message and get a response with false information about how much was in their account, sometimes even seeing balances climb by 1 per cent in an hour.
With returns looking like that, who could blame people for sharing the scheme with their friends and family on social media?

EXPLOITING FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Once a scheme has started, it stays alive – at least for a while – through social media. One person gets taken in by the promise of big returns on cryptocurrency investments and spreads the word to friends and family members.
Sometimes big names get involved. For instance, the kingpin behind GainBitcoin and other alleged scams in India convinced a number of Bollywood celebrities to promote his book Cryptocurrency For Beginners.
He even tried to make himself a bit of a celebrity, proclaiming himself a “cryptocurrency guru,” as he led efforts that cost investors between US$769 million and US$2 billion.
Not all the celebrities know they’re involved. In one blog post, iCenter featured a video that purported to be an endorsement by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, holding a sign featuring iCenter’s logo. Videos of Justin Timberlake and Christopher Walken were deceptively edited so they appeared to praise iCenter, too.

FRAUDULENT INITIAL COIN OFFERINGS
Another popular scam technique is called an “initial coin offering”. A potentially legitimate investment opportunity, an initial coin offering essentially is a way for a startup cryptocurrency company to raise money from its future users: In exchange for sending active cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum, customers are promised a discount on the new cryptocoins.
Many initial coin offerings have turned out to be scams, with organisers engaging in cunning plots, even renting fake offices and creating fancy-looking marketing materials.
In 2017, a lot of hype and media coverage about cryptocurrencies fed a huge wave of initial coin offering fraud. In 2018, about 1,000 initial coin offering efforts collapsed, costing backers at least US$100 million.
Many of these projects had no original ideas – more than 15 per cent of them had copied ideas from other cryptocurrency efforts, or even plagiarised supporting documentation.
Investors looking for returns in a new technology sector are still interested in blockchains and cryptocurrencies – but should beware that they are complex systems that are new even to those who are selling them. Newcomers and relative experts alike have fallen prey to scams.
In an environment like the current cryptocurrency market, potential investors should be very careful to research what they’re putting their money into and be sure to find out who is involved as well as what the actual plan is for making real money – without defrauding others.
Nir Kshetri is professor of management at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.

Source: CNA/nr

[karagun125]

That's true because scam projects and ico's would take this market's opportunity to conduct a project that is only fraud and scam. We should be aware on what ico or project we would enter, we should do first a background research about the project, team, and staffs if they are simillar with the ones who have scam accusations.

[adi1972]

I myself got scam by Icenter. I knew it was ponzi-like scam, thinking I can exit before I got ripoff BUT they were cleverer and exited before I could.

[Erickan]

The crypto field is a fertile ground for scammers, most victims are new and do not have much knowledge about the crypto market. Many sophisticated forms of fraud are created to bypass our faces. so if you want to participate in the crypto market, it is best to research it thoroughly.

[pushups44]

Though it may be unpopular to say, one way to avoid scams is to simply choose well-established altcoins with a working product and reputable team to invest in. Of course, even the most legitimate projects may turn out to be scams, but selecting the cream of the crop will substantially reduce risk of falling victim to fraud. I suggest sticking with higher-ranked coins.

[labilaab]

Thanks for the heads up. Its really annoying that these scammers are back on popping everytime the market goes up since its a good oppurtunity for them also. So we should be cautious and be wise everytime.

[sanida]

Things are going good at the market nowadays but people with bad intentions are taking these event as an advantages for the people who recently engage on crypto industry. They will give you some good investment opportunity which is mostly lies and deception and when you fall on their bait they will just dissapear like you never saw them before.

[passwordnow]

Thanks for reminding mostly here, it's not enough to just remind them when someone will cry again as he become a recent victim of another scam. And we already have an example about this:

https://nulltx.com/someone-is-trying-to-create-bitconnect-2-0-once-again/
https://coinfomania.com/bitconnect-2-0-scam/

[drgomez89]

When the Bull market Is up . There's A Lot a newcomer yo the crypto world thinking that's they ate going todo get rich easly AND scam them are the best way to get money easly. I think se have yo teach the newcomers early how not get scammed that's easly. For the sake of the Bull market

[bgaf]

Take for example the repux and joy token project. They both raised good amount during their token sales and still the fraud or the lack of objective made them to become scam exit project. How could they justify that the project will not be continued anymore due to lack of fund? Employee salary?  Thats nut actually. There is why there is soft cap and hardcap which on the amount they raised seems to be enough to pull of the project but the other stuff happened. So technically they have been just purely made the project and planned to exit at the end.

[Yaunfitda]

So it's 2017 again? Wherein there's a lot of scam projects and investors doesn't do their due diligence but are more willing to throw their money around and bitch later?

That is why we always tell investors to DYOR before investing on ICO's or whatever you want to involved money in crypto because scammers are everyone so just be careful and use our common sense.

[BlackFor3st]

Only newbies and greedy investors are the common victims in this type of scams but if you want to avoid this kind of happenings then it is better that you should expand your knowledge and triple check everything before investing.

Most of us are impatient and don't like to research the project before investing in any project as this will also takes time to do especially if you are not yet familiar on how to do this things correctly. So it's better that we should increase our awareness to fight this kind of tactics.

[shiming]

Indeed, thank you for reminding that with the recovery of the encryption market, all kinds of deceptions are still getting more, we need to be careful about various scams. Look forward to the formalization of the law.

[jakelyson]

There will always be scammers around even when the market is down but mostly when the market is up. Now that the price of bitcoin is surging up again, expect the rise of scammers again. We should learn on our experience last 2017 where scammers are all over the place. We should be wiser in our investment.s

[Simple_Plan]

There's fact that when the market goes up, a lot of fortune tellers emerge. In my oninion, not only Ponzi scheme but all these kinds of tellers are scam, too. Anyway, providing the scam exposure situation in the past couple of years, people already have a specific amount of experience. That's a good sign since the more people are scammed, the more tarnished crypto's image is.

[Snaic]

The various forms of fraud are added. I participated in the ICO Local Trade signature campaign before September last year, registered on demand on their Cryptoa website. com, passed there two levels of KYC verification with the provision of a copy of your passport and waited for six months to accrue their LOT tokens.

However, they came up with a new form of fraud. In one of their telegrams, not in ICO telegrams, they demanded that all participants in the ICO bounty write to their e-mail repeated information about themselves. Who has not written such information, lose the right to receive earned tokens. The calculation is purely that six months after the end of the ICO, rarely will anyone call on their group of telegrams that are not related to the holding of the ICO and, thus, they will not pay us the earned tokens.

This is a direct deception. Nothing should allow us the right to receive earned tokens, especially after passing through an illegal KYC verification procedure.

[sidkz]

yes secure storage of tokens is now becoming a problem
the exchanges are robbing, their wallets are being hacked, they are trying in every way to cheat,
and in the near future it will not stop as the cryptocurrency is gaining popularity

[lyks15]

Yes you are right,now that crypto specially bitcoin are continue to increase there are lot of scammer and fraud incident. But I think the safety and security is on your hand. We need to keep every transactions private specially our password and private keys to avoid hacked accounts.

[Msworld83]

If you are in the space of cryptocurrency then you always need to be at alert and securing your self from scammer every time .

So I don't see market moving as a time to be scared of or time to onlynprotect yourself from been scammed , they are always at work and always do your research before investing in any coin or project as many find it difficult to read or spend little time to know what is new to them as no one is to be trust in the space of cryptocurrency.

[rosezionjohn]

I myself got scam by Icenter. I knew it was ponzi-like scam, thinking I can exit before I got ripoff BUT they were cleverer and exited before I could.

  This is what greed does to you.

Thanks for reminding mostly here, it's not enough to just remind them when someone will cry again as he become a recent victim of another scam. And we already have an example about this:

https://nulltx.com/someone-is-trying-to-create-bitconnect-2-0-once-again/
https://coinfomania.com/bitconnect-2-0-scam/

as long as newbies keeps coming, always expect some victims. It is usually their own actions that leads them to all these scams. We can only do so much in reminding them and posting some guides.