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

[passwordnow]

It is a very known scam lately and they have migrated on YouTube, showing videos to make it look legit. But with the scheme of sending them ETH for what? the giveaway? you should have already noticed it that it's a known scam that started on twitter and then just made it alive again through YouTube. Sorry about your loss and thank you for informing the community to make this issue alive again because there are still channels and videos that are active.

Those scammers are creating fake videos that show if they were sending the giveaway to their address to make it looks legit for everyone. Based on the story and it's much more familiar as a ponzi when you are sending your money and you can double your money instantly and OP gets scammed caused by this scammer was stealing the official logo of ethereum to make it legit.
The problem was if OP lacks knowledge about that. There will be no give away even vitalik has already mentioned in on his official twitter account. Any giveaways are scam.
There was no way to recover his loss and what he must to do to learn even more about that.

It's a total scam, they will give false promises of returning more than double but it's all fake. No return will be given and the amount that will be sent to them will be lost forever in the hands of the owner. OP already admitted that he was not aware of it and bite the scam but I disagree with what you say about any giveaway is a scam.
There are legit giveaways there that are really for free, you just have to figure out the legit ones.

[1714697899]

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[isaac_clarke22]

Good thing that the channel was already nuked, so that no more users would be harmed from this further.
YT algorithm in making recommends is kinda screwed up sometimes, so don't trust it too much when you're having the thoughts of joining those.
Have you checked how many subs did that channel had? They could be having chat bots in their live chat, for the purpose of making it a legitimate channel for giveaways.
That live event in the video could be just an edited video file that was originally from past video but was altered, because these scammers would know that they'll be caught in no time by getting tracked.

[puertorikosena]

It seems to me that people who fall into such scams never learn from the mistakes of others. They have too much desire to get easy money, but in return they receive losses and bitter experience. Fraudsters have always exploited human weaknesses and will continue to do so.

[ameliana]

After seeing what happens to you, I don't think you can do much or hope your personal ETH is returned. but I see that the fraudster's ETH address has become ashes or pishing, and the fraudster will never be able to enjoy the loot from your assets. other times beware that In this cryptoqurrency world nothing is truly free or becomes rich overnight.

[SlimShadyMmp]

Seriously there is just no reason for your lost from my point of view I mean 3ETH can be invested and profit made back if you know one or two thing My suggestion is know that nothing worth it comes cheap work and keep faith and it will be well but dont waste what you already got, it might take time to regain it

[terizla]

Most of scammer is always active in popular site like a Youtube. And Youtube is the Top of Streaming Videos website.
This mean the popular site is the popular place of scammer.
I never trust crypto in youtube and everyday there are have live videos bitcoin giveaway. This is 100% fake. Be carefull.

[Valzador]

There are legit giveaways there that are really for free, you just have to figure out the legit ones.

Giveaway means giving a thing for free without any conditions if a giveaway has a state that requires you to send an amount of money, it means not a giveaway but a contest or campaign.

All giveaway must be free and without conditions.

[adzino]

Too bad you fell for this  . What ethereum employee are you talking about? Those are just some scammers posing as official "ethereum employee" (and they don't even exist in real life!) and scamming poor naive people like you! If this was a real giveaway, why would they ask you to send them the ETH first? If they really wanted to giveaway coins, they would just ask for your wallet address and send you free coins over there.
There is nothing much you can do sadly. Think of the amount you lost as a payment for this valuable lesson.

[passwordnow]

There are legit giveaways there that are really for free, you just have to figure out the legit ones.

Giveaway means giving a thing for free without any conditions if a giveaway has a state that requires you to send an amount of money, it means not a giveaway but a contest or campaign.

All giveaway must be free and without conditions.

Yes. That's what I'm saying, you just have to look for the legit ones. We have this on our forum in the games and rounds section, a lot of giveaways are happening there starting from promos of different casinos and other individuals just want to have fun.
But it's sort of marketing for people to try their website out by giving them free amount to explore their platform.

[torrantz]

After seeing what happens to you, I don't think you can do much or hope your personal ETH is returned. but I see that the fraudster's ETH address has become ashes or pishing, and the fraudster will never be able to enjoy the loot from your assets. other times beware that In this cryptoqurrency world nothing is truly free or becomes rich overnight.

Transaction in the blockchain is absolute and it can't be rolling back after the transaction gets a single confirmation by the block. What he can do to make sure if he will never try to join in any suspicious airdrops again in the future. There are a bunch of scammers around us and we must always be careful anytime in any situation.

[lepbagong]

currently there are many modes of fraud and are now increasingly sophisticated in their actions, but in reality can be avoided if you try to take the time to communicate or read about things like this in many forums available. use common sense every time you want to take action, what you will do makes sense and is acceptable with wise thinking. because every step you take will have a good effect if you want to be wise in moving. unfortunately you do not want to report to the authorities if absolutely necessary so that there is a deterrent effect.

[bgaf]

This is so sad for your case. I am hearing about this scheme and unfortunate you end up falling in this joke scam of some hype youtubers. There are many awareness and cautious post already from this kind of scam. That's big money if youll ask me and sorry for your loss. Lesson learned if someone send you a proposal that is too good to be true never ever entertained the idea no matter how many convincing stuff he said and send to you.

As a newbie this is the most heartbreaking event that will happened to you. Anyway, maybe you already did regret it. So starting from now on stop interacting with the likes of them especially stranger keep introducing themselve as professionals.

[BlackFor3st]

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.

This kind of scheme is very old and I wonder why there are still victims to this kind of scheme. This scheme was being spread in Facebook also and I am very impressed how active there posters are just to make their scheme more real.

What they are spreading in Facebook is very similar to what happened to you, they are posting something about airdrop and once you will send some amount of ETH to the airdrop address they will send you back x2 or more to what you have sent.

For newbies, read it carefully so you can avoid this kind of scheme and the easiest way to avoid it is to control yourself then don't be greedy to earn a huge money in just a short period of time as there are no easy money in crypto world.

[RealMalatesta]

After seeing what happens to you, I don't think you can do much or hope your personal ETH is returned. but I see that the fraudster's ETH address has become ashes or pishing, and the fraudster will never be able to enjoy the loot from your assets. other times beware that In this cryptoqurrency world nothing is truly free or becomes rich overnight.

Transaction in the blockchain is absolute and it can't be rolling back after the transaction gets a single confirmation by the block. What he can do to make sure if he will never try to join in any suspicious airdrops again in the future. There are a bunch of scammers around us and we must always be careful anytime in any situation.

Never to deal with such kinds of any promotions that promise huge benefits. Study and assess if there's any potential in case you are really looking for any investment or any contest that will lead you to provide money or your time. Scammers are just around waiting for people to runaway their money. Be very careful and spend time with your research.

Usually we should strictly avoid schemes who provide higher returns because earning that money easily is not really possible. That is just a trick used by scammers to attract some newbies and scam those innocent people. OP lost a good amount of ETH which he was been saving from a long time. This only took place because of the greed OP had in his mind to bear higher profits. This explains us how riskier our greed can be.

This is the time where we should kill our greed and move onto some another task where we could only earn with our hard efforts and never to run behind freebies. Scammers have a evil nature and they would never feel pity for anyone so the chance of them returning your money is actually "Zero."

[mersal]

Youtube will block the channel once it got enough reports related to scam but they are not responsible for you got scammed so you can't do anything by appealing this to Google.

This is completely your fault,why you still trust these kind of giveaways which are really too good to be true,if you have waited for few minutes and see what is actually happening there might saves you from that 7 ETH scam.

You can't trace those scammers even with the complaint on your local police station because hackers know how to hide their original location on this internet world.

Let's take this as costly lesson.

[pixie85]

I have taken part in a number of legit airdrops and they'd never ask you to deposit anything with them. You'd always be asked to sign a message or something like that. The only case where deposits were required is when exchanges were forking coins for you but it's a special case. It's not a giveaway and you can do it yourself if you want.

A golden rule is to remember that when you send coins to someone it's not like sending fiat where they have their account with a name and address. It's giving full control to someone you don't know. Do you believe that if you sent cash to a stranger via mail, typing the name XXX and a random street name they would return it to you? It's the same with cryptocurrencies.

The channel and video cannot be opened anymore. You could change the links to include a copy.

[Magkirap]

Youtube will block the channel once it got enough reports related to scam but they are not responsible for you got scammed so you can't do anything by appealing this to Google.

This is completely your fault,why you still trust these kind of giveaways which are really too good to be true,if you have waited for few minutes and see what is actually happening there might saves you from that 7 ETH scam.

You can't trace those scammers even with the complaint on your local police station because hackers know how to hide their original location on this internet world.

Let's take this as costly lesson.

Indeed mate, the only thing you can do is to block and report the channel and also to raise awareness you can post it on social media or forum so that they cannot be victim of that youtube channel and take that mistake as a lesson for you to not trust anything good in the internet for scammers lurks everywhere inside the internet. Your ETH will not come back to you so work again so that you can earn it back and so not make the dame mistake.

[davinchi]

I really feel sad for you but the only mistake here is yours. You should never trust any random channels who pretend to be the official ones. You should always open the official website and dig for some information over there because any giveaway or something like this would always be listed onto their official websites.

The scammer actually scammed you much easily and might perhaps be motivated to scam few others. Youtube is never a trusted platform in terms of cryptocurrency investments. You should never listen to those youtubers who keep on promoting any coin or service and in this case, you actually trusted a random guy who just had a channel named etherum?

Moreover, why didn't you care watching the current view number onto the live video? I am sure any official live chat from etherum would have hundreds of thousands of views which in case of this scammer's live video would have less than thousand? Am I correct on this?

[airdnasxela]

You should report those kind of stuff on YouTube so they can't scam other people again. This is one of the reason why Youtube had an issue about deleting crypto related videos. Because it's part of their terms and policies. Youtube cannot distinguish every video if it's trying to scam other users that's why it should be a lesson to you not to trust easily even if it looks real. Because a scammer wouldn't let others to notice they are not real. They'll make efforts just to make it real. Scammers are good at that.

[LogitechMouse]

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.

These few lines is a sign that it is a scam. If you are knowledgeable enough, you will notice that this is impossible. It is like Bitcoin Doubler in Bitcoin or the "100% in X amount of days scheme". The more ETH you will send, the more ETH will get scammed for you . I hate to say this but being a newbie is hard especially if you are holding a huge amount of money .

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".

Whatever the comments and messages are, the fact that this is "too good to be true" is already a sign that this is a scam and yet you fell into it. Can't blame you since I will assume that you are a newbie in crypto but you're stupid to hold a huge amount of ETH yet you are not that knowledgeable when it comes to scams like this.

I waited and waited and also others were writing in the chat about why i takes so long...

You and the others who waited are the most naive persons in the world. Hate to say this but it is true .
 

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

You have 3 choices.
1. Call a police and share to them what happen to you.
2. Trace the scammers if you can do it.
3. Move on and take it as a lesson for you.

You will not learn if you don't commit mistakes like this trust me at least now you learned something right . Don't do it again and move on.