[ETH] I was scammed on Youtube. What to do?

[meanwords]

Jeez. I am so impressed, not by the scammers but by your naivety. I just can't believe how people fall for this even if they know that the cryptocurrency space is full of scammers. This is plain sight robbery. Why didn't you do your research first before sending the money? You are either naive or this is fake. You even plugged your eth address for donations.

Maybe, just maybe, you are the one who is robbing here?

[Bonwin]

Your story looks too real to be debunked. I cannot really fathom if you are speaking the truth or not, but if you were actually a victim to this, it will be better for you to just to learn you; lessons straight up. Seeing that some people still fall victim of this, is quite surprising to me.

Also, do you know why I thought this is a cooked-up story?
You said you are new to crypto or that you are a newbie and yet you could write so well in blockchain terms. That made me feel you know a lot and that probably you are just eager to beg, but in a dubious way, for ETH from people, who might be easily touched by such a pathetic story.

[ntsdm1]

One thing surprises me - how do people like You fall for obvious scammers?The whole problem is greed. You making a coin transfer wanted to get rich in an instant. But this does not happen. At least on planet Earth! Be vigilant in the future.

[pakhitheboss]

Guys i want to share my scam story - where i was scammed and lost almost 7 ETHs - with you for 2 purposes. One is to warn others not to fall into there youtube giveaway scams and the second reason is if there is any way to stop these scammers and burn the lost ETHs (or even if its possible to get my ETHs back?).

The situation was this:
On 27th of December 2019 i was opening my Browser and Youtube. And YT recommend me a current ongoing live video about Ethereum on their main page. It was titled something with Ethereum giveaway whatever...

The channel was named "Ethereum" and showed the original logo, so it seemed its the official channel. It had some videos from the past also listed so it looked legit.
So that live video i was watching showed a summit in nice quality, where we could see Vitalik Buterin on a summit and it was portrait as if it was a live event. I was listening a few moments to it and then i saw in the description something about a holiday givewaway by Ethereum Foundation to further accelerate the use of their coins in the crypto ecosystem.
They were offering like random increase to deposited ETHs. So for instance if one was to transfer 3 ETHs, you could get IIRC up to 9 ETHs back.
It was staggered and the more you deposit to their address, the more you could get. The max ETHs they would send out was like a 1000 or so? And they said it was coming back from the same adress you deposit it to.

At first it sounded fishy, but new to the crypto ecosystem i heard about real giveaways in the past, in form of airdrops or bunnyhunts and so forth. So it wasnt that fishy and sounded legit to me a bit at least.
My thoughts were like: Ok Ethereum was above 1000 dollars in 2017 and now they are down to 130 some because of the burst bubble and some of the ICOs on their platform going to zero, so they really want their coins to be used more. Kind of a PR action.
The live chat was also filled with lots and lots of postive messages about people receiving like 30 ETHs or some that supposedly deposited way more than 3 ETHs got back up to 100ETHs. There was one official support employee in the chat who moderated it and provided "support".
Thinking about that today, i was for a moment a bit sceptical reading that many of the positive messages were actually coming from russian kyrillic YT users names.

The transfer:
Well so i transfered the first 3 ETHs, which was actually only 2.99 ETHs because of the fees and in the live chat they told me i had to transfer more because their random bot in the background is not triggering below 3 ETHs and the support staff guy assured me that it will be added up, once more than the minimum of 3 ETHs are received in their wallet.
So i did and transfered another 0.49 ETHs and i was so overly impressed that i thought well ok i'll send them all that i have and made directly after it another transfer with my remaining 3.29ETHs. These were all the EThs i ever had.
I waited and waited and also others were writing in the chat about why i takes so long... So is started the blockchain explorer and saw that they only had like 20 ETHs in the adress... This was the minute when all the alarm bells rang. I immediately asked this in the chat why there is only like 20 ETHs and so on. I was even posting my Transaction hashes and this was the point when the only thing they were posting was like "Im sorry we are currently busy and will get back to you in a few moments".
Suddenly the chat closed and the live video was over. Thats it.
 
The reason i waited so long is because im actually a rather good herated person. I know the eastern europe and russing wages and the way they live over there... So i thought maybe its a young random guy now having 20-30ETHs and be able to make a living for him and his family you know...I was also terrible sick and was unemployed for 5 years in the past so i know how tough life can be. It was my hard earned cash from my job and actually thoese ETHs were the first crypto coins i bought in my life.
But Using the blockchainexplorer and seeing now what ammount they collected i think that this is a professionally organized scam group behind it and we should do something about it. Who is liable in such a case?

Here is all the Data:
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpSnN_WtZ-602vWKKhS48mg
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CCPhsWMww
Scammers receiving address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xc9746c60b47aebbf13ba8e45144e4c2ddb3f0cba
Scammer transferred it later to here (currently 332 ETHs on it!): https://etherscan.io/address/0xb70f65c1faa2f1160d006b585ebf564781e8dae6
Scammers also transferred it later here (currently 498 ETHs on it!): https://etherscan.io/address/0x9838eb7bdbaedfb5a28d67be763eadd61cb3e428

Here are my Transfers:

DateCoin                         Amount TransactionFee   Address                                                                                        TXID                                                                Status

2019-12-27 12:48:30 ETH   3.29   0   0xc9746C60B47AEbBf13Ba8E45144e4c2Ddb3F0CBA   0xaa31f7c69a6a079096b14aebf50f769dbc95427fe00307b62ed16c838997f8c6           Completed

2019-12-27 12:41:15 ETH   0.49   0   0xc9746C60B47AEbBf13Ba8E45144e4c2Ddb3F0CBA   0xf3408936a49660ca9a0ac5b57fc20025a557ea6d05caea4a9cf4702f6e0e4d34           Completed

2019-12-27 12:32:19 ETH   2.99   0   0xc9746C60B47AEbBf13Ba8E45144e4c2Ddb3F0CBA   0xfb5c2be9bfd55253b9066f3ae4cd8122f6b2b162e63672874438f55da2e0b1ae           Completed

Here is my Binance screenshot about my transfers: imgur.com/a/3IqBNVb

Finally if you reading this and you are maybe a employe from Ethereum, or if you have a lot ETHs and you feels you may want to contribute to recover my loss, i have my ETH adress available in any case.:
0xc1C5985042425aEfB8F018683a0C23859AD11e73

Thanks alot people. I really appreciate all your input. Sorry for my english, its not my native language.

You should first report it to the local police.
There area lot of Scams happening on YouTube now days. Scammers are hacking reputed channels and then they change the name and logo. They then create a live stream of an old interview with one the famous crypto entrepreneurs. The chat box is always disabled and the description has all the information required for scamming.
It is similar to telegram scams.

[Lite.Six]

so many people in any forums or some groups have always warned us who jumped into crypto world to don't trust anyone. even your friends. and you, fall for scam because you trust a person even you don't know him. be careful when you used your money. if you feel something fishy, just leave it.

[White Christmas]

Jeez. I am so impressed, not by the scammers but by your naivety. I just can't believe how people fall for this even if they know that the cryptocurrency space is full of scammers. This is plain sight robbery. Why didn't you do your research first before sending the money? You are either naive or this is fake. You even plugged your eth address for donations.

Maybe, just maybe, you are the one who is robbing here?

We all know that this crypto space are full of scammers but the thing is he is just reporting it to us in order for us to be more aware about on what situation he is up to. Scammers are everywhere in the crypto space and what we need to do is to share all of our experience to them in order for them to be more practical and more knowledgeable about what the scammers are planning into, and the best thing to do is to do dome research and ask someone in order not to br victim of scammers again.

[magneto]

If you are falling for such rudimentary scams then I implore you to seriously reconsider investing in altcoins like ETH, because your opinions about the coins can likely be swayed easily one way or another by simple methods of manipulation and you won't be able to hold onto your positions for as long as it takes to make a profit.

This one in particular is one of the very common scams that exist within the crypto space, mostly targeting newbies like yourself.

Follow common sense and you'll be able to avoid almost all of the scams of this type. If an extraordinary sum of returns is being promised then it's probably too good to be true.

[bitcoinst]

Surprisingly, 10 years ago there was a similar scheme in which scammers asked to deposit a certain amount of money into a wallet, and in return sent a random amount of money that should always have been more than the down payment. People sent money, first to check a little, in return they received a threefold sum. After believing that the scheme worked, people sent huge amounts, of course, nothing came back. Time goes by and the methods do not change.

[Psynthax]

One thing surprises me - how do people like You fall for obvious scammers?The whole problem is greed. You making a coin transfer wanted to get rich in an instant. But this does not happen. At least on planet Earth! Be vigilant in the future.

it's easy to answer that. He was not aware of that before and he was a part of the newcomers in the crypto. From what has already said by him and he is a new user in crypto. He was writing if he doesn't know about how the blockchain works these days, The tx can't be reverted and he has already lost his money.

[Leonardo7]

You have not been following various thread warning about give away threads by asking you for a deposit to instantly receive a double or higher value. You should have used such money on charity rather than wasting it on scammers. The ETH is gone and can't be reversed. These scammers fill telegram, twitter, and Facebook, they are even into airdrop.

[abeecrypto]

I see a lot of people are quick to tell you how naïve you are. Well, stuff like this happens to newbies. It is understandable. At one point in our lives, we become naïve.
I hope you have learned from this mistake. Scammers are out there. Scrutinize, ask questions, and stay guided.
Thanks for posting this. At least, some people will learn from your mistakes.
And you didn’t have to beg for contribution in the end. It’s against the rules.  

[Pamadar]

You have not been following various thread warning about give away threads by asking you for a deposit to instantly receive a double or higher value. You should have used such money on charity rather than wasting it on scammers. The ETH is gone and can't be reversed. These scammers fill telegram, twitter, and Facebook, they are even into airdrop.

Yeah right those scammers knows how to work with their prey, they will give such a nice promises in order to attract investors that will be scammed after. You need to add more research before you enter and use your money for any investment that will be available in any platforms. Be guided by this forum by continuously read and be updated.

[kaneki007]

There are many cases of YouTube account hackers hacked because they once downloaded an application containing a virus (I know this because one of YouTube reviews applications offered by advertisers via e-mail and at some time the account is logged in from different places when the application is installed). And this is where the scammer uses the account to do livestream as you say, it is very sad to hear that you and others have lost some ETH, and this can all be lessons for all communities to be careful.

[lizarder]

right now it looks like this channel has been successfully deleted and this might be a lesson so don't ever be fooled by the lure of giveaway or investment that offers to doubler ethereum, I hope that in the future,cases like this will not repeat or maybe youtube can filter out this kind of content so there is no more victim even though this seems impossible.

[fullhdpixel]

You must have checked on the reviews/comments, his subscribers, history of videos, etc to quickly judge if he/she is genuine.
I have seen such "doubling" kind of scam in my telegram. Even I have not subscribed to such telegram groups, people somehow manage to add me to their scammy groups.

But, when I ask questions about their genuineness, I get removed from that group and my telegram screen also getting closed. This happened to me in the name of binance like they are starting a new decentralized exchange and for that they were giving away free ETH. Be careful always. No one will give you free money for doing nothing.

[crzy]

The video is already down and the ETH addy is tagged as scam. Sorry about your loss, it wasn't a small amount at all.

And now what to do?

1.-Call the local police to report the scam.
2.-Try to trace the schemes.
3.-Alert the community about the scam, that way more people will be able to avoid it.

Report this immediately especially on youtube because for sure scammers are using a hacked account to scam people and unfortunately you’re of the victim OP. Its must to share this kind of scheme so your friends and other people wont fall on this, don’t trust anyone in this online world and ask someone if its legit or not.

[Becky666]

It was obvious that you and many others fell for this scammer or group scammers that carried out this dastardly act. This has been a known scam but with some high level of professionalism included, nevertheless, next time you should be able to do more research about such things before you embark on transaction with the person online.

Frankly speaking, this will create more awareness among others who may or might be planing for such like you. Internet has no free money, more also, does it has second chance when the mistakes have been made.

[#Darren]

Sorry for your loss mate, but there is nothing you can do about it. Try to learn a lesson and not to fall into such scam schemes again. Unfortunately, crypto industry is full of such thing that are on every single corner.

[meanwords]

Jeez. I am so impressed, not by the scammers but by your naivety. I just can't believe how people fall for this even if they know that the cryptocurrency space is full of scammers. This is plain sight robbery. Why didn't you do your research first before sending the money? You are either naive or this is fake. You even plugged your eth address for donations.

Maybe, just maybe, you are the one who is robbing here?

We all know that this crypto space are full of scammers but the thing is he is just reporting it to us in order for us to be more aware about on what situation he is up to. Scammers are everywhere in the crypto space and what we need to do is to share all of our experience to them in order for them to be more practical and more knowledgeable about what the scammers are planning into, and the best thing to do is to do dome research and ask someone in order not to br victim of scammers again.

Did you read the whole thread? He is not just reporting it to us, he is also asking for donations which is equivalent to begging here in the forum. That's one of the reason why I can't take this story seriously. A newbie account who knows about cryptocurrency but got scammed from a too good to be true giveaway and is asking for donations, isn't that quite suspicious?

[Saisher]

It's a sorry loss and it's because of greed that you fail to do the right thing and that is asking the community if the giveaway is valid and legal, it's not the only one there are also on Youtube, telegram they did not dare posts here in Bitcointalk because they will be caught.