Hello BitcoinTalk Community.I have been here previously under a few different accounts with essentially no posts and almost no merit, but this is the account that I plan to actively use until I leave this forum. I am not sure if I should post this here or in the Scam Accusations forum, but I feel like since there isn't a specific individual on here that I can point a finger at, this serves better as a public warning to all crypto newbies, as there are still people falling for this, and that is hurting my head.
The Crypto Double/Crypto Airdrop Scam1 - Anatomy of an Airdrop/Double scamThis scam is one that I would say is nearly as old as crypto itself, this is one that is employed with almost every form of currency or valuable commodity, but it has become especially notable in cryptocurrency due to how frequently it occurs and how people fall for it. The basic anatomy of this scam is that a fraudulent user will usually impersonate a notable figure in the cryptocurrency community (IE; for ETH airdrop scams, people will impersonate The Ethereum Association or Vitalin Buterik (Creator of ETH)) and pretend to be giving away extremely large quantities of their chosen cryptocurrency. They will make a fake promise and provide a "Promo" wallet address for the user to send a set amount of money to, they then claim that after sending the required amount of money, you will instantaneously (or after a set amount of time) receive up to 10x / 1000% of your initial investment, if this sounds too good to be true, that is because it is. These scammers will often use alternate/shill accounts along with viewbotting/likebotting to make their giveaway seem more legit, often spoofing thousands of vouches to try and convince people to fall for their scam.
1a. - Ponzi/PyramidIt will end up being a "Ponzi Scheme", a Ponzi/Pyramid scheme is described by investopedia.com as:
The Ponzi scheme generates returns for early investors by acquiring new investors. This is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors' funds to pay the earlier backers.
The scammers will pay back the first investors using the investments of later investors to increase the "legitimacy" of their airdrop/doubling service, one they are reputable enough to secure an investment that meets their scam goal, they will exitscam and disappear with all of the user's funds.
1b. - Running Scam They just outright run with the funds that they are given, no payback to any of the investors, they will usually go to a new account and start the same scam over again under a different name, often having the same graphics/description of the scam, most of the scammers wont put in enough effort to make their airdrop scam look unique each time, and will often reuse the same luring principles over multiple accounts and multiple coins.
2 - Where do these scams occur? How do people fall for them there?Crypto Doubling/Airdrop scams occur EVERYWHERE that people are given a platform to discuss something, this scam occurs everywhere from YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Gambling sites and even here! They are quite common on here and reddit, but I will primarily be discussing them on YouTube and Twitter, as those are the 2 outlets in which I have seen them the most out of anywhere, and that is where I see people falling for them the most.
2a - TwitterTwitter is one of the leading social medias on the planet, the founder of twitter (Jack Dorsey) is an avid cryptocurrency user and bitcoin supporter, many discussions about cryptocurrency utilize twitter, and MANY cryptocurrency users own a twitter account. Twitter's avid crypto-centric userbase and open speech platform makes it the perfect place for fraudsters to target people in their scams. The crypto airdrop scam on twitter usually unfolds like this.
- ** This occurs 50% of the time*[/i]* The scammers will either purchase a compromised verified twitter, or they will compromise their own and use it to facilitate their fraudulent airdrop.
- **Using these accounts** The scammers will impersonate high ranking tech figures or crypto figures on twitter, notable examples of this are people impersonating Jack Dorsey (CEO of twitter), Elon Musk (Tesla Founder), CZ (Binance CEO) and others of that regard. **If they are using a verified account, people sometimes wont bother to doublecheck the handle and will just glance at the Verified Badge and assume it is the real person that the scammers are impersonating**
- They will then either reply to a tweet by the person they are impersonating with the scam, or they will tweet their scam and use twitter advertising to promote it to the followers of that person, the promotion scam is visible in this image: https://i.imgur.com/ZGizSnN.png *Credit to Medium/@micallst for the screenshot*
2b - YouTubeYouTube is the world's largest video sharing platform, and just like twitter, has an absurd amount of cryptocurrency enthusiasts present on it's platform. Seeing a fake airdrop livestream in my recommendeds while simply browsing YouTube last night is what actually prompted me to write this PSA thread, as upon inspection of the "Promo" addresses, the scammers had up to $XX,XXX USD in their scam addresses! (More on this in 3X). A YouTube airdrop scam usually unfolds like this
- ** This occurs 50% of the time*[/i]* The scammers will either purchase a compromised aged YouTube channel (2007-2011), or they will compromise their own and use it to facilitate their fraudulent airdrop.
- **Using these aged accounts** The scammers will impersonate high ranking tech figures or Crypto Figures or large Crypto-Centric organisations (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Foundation, XRP Foundation, Binance etc.)[/i]
- They will then start a livestream on the impersonation channels, the content of the stream will either just be a page showcasing the airdrop information, or sometimes it will feature an event like an interview with the person they are impersonating or a large crypto convention/conference, accompanied by the fake airdrop information, they will also usually include some falsified evidence of the legitimacy of their scam (Fake chain explorer transaction logs etc). An example of a stream can be viewed in this image: https://i.imgur.com/ipIB0CR.png *Screenshot by me*
- After the stream is live, they will then start spoofing the statistics on their stream, using SMM services to likebot and viewbot the stream, using fake chat bots to vouch the legitimacy of the airdrop, they will also silently ban anyone who brings the legitimacy of the airdrop in to question. Evidence of this can be viewed in this image: https://i.imgur.com/r3JZ5Zt.png *Screenshot by me*
3 - How much has been lost to this? How can we stop this?The person (Or should I say people) responsible for these are large in numbers, there are many different individuals and scamming organizations that perform this scam, but it is a very easy estimate to make that the amount stolen using this scam, by every different scammer and every different user effected in this scam is over 7 digits. The one scam organization that I discovered today on youtube had over 125,000 XRP in their XRP Scam wallet and over 131 ETH in their ETH scam wallets, looking through numerous Twitter based ElonMusk ETH Scams, many of them had over 15 ETH in their "Promo" wallets, usually taken either by withdrawing from exchanges to make their service look legit, or from actually scamming people.
3a - So how can we stop this?There are many preventative measures we can take to stop these scams or lessen the overall impact that they have on the cryptocurrency community, many of them are quite straightforward and easy! For starters, just report them! If they are streaming on youtube, click the flag icon above their subscribe button and report them for "Scamming/Fraud", if it is on twitter, Report them for Impersonation, Scamming & Fraud, and if they have a verified account, report them for Compromised Account (They get locked VERY fast if you do this).
If you wanna hit the scammers where it hurts (In the wallet, like I did), then it is worth going through the transaction logs on their promo addresses, see if there are withdrawals or deposits to any exchanges from the address or other linked addresses (Ie; binance, coinbase, bittrex, bitmex), email the designated security teams of each company and dictate that there are users using their exchange to facilitate fraud/scams, be sure to be as informative as possible and include the wallet addresses of the exchange that are connected to the address used for fraud, the address that was actually used for fraud, and proof of fraud (screencap the stream/twitter post, copy the description ETC.)
I have recently done the above to the YouTube scammers that I saw myself, I will be posting a followup thread if my report was successful, but if you see any of these, you may contact the security teams of the exchanges below:
Coinbase:
security@coinbase.com Binance:
https://www.binance.com/en/support/articles/360000006051Bittrex: Will add later
Kraken: Will add later
Bitmex: Will add later[/list]
