SCHEMES WHICH NEWBIES NEEDED TO AVOID.

Scamming is so rampant on here and in other social media platform it's best to educate newbies on what platforms they should avoid so that they will not lose their hard earned money.

CLOUDMINING

We all know mining is one way to get bitcoins but not all of us can able to buy the hardware's since the price is so expensive plus the maintenance cost of operation is so expensive and by this scammer use this opportunity to create a cloud mining ponzi scheme platforms which offers to the people to gain some profit by investing at them. At first people will get their profits but when the time they got their threshold they will run away and this scheme is repeatedly happen even by now.

CRYPROCURRENCY TRADING OR BOT TRADING

Scammers using the word trading or trading bots for scamming people and mostly they will show their portfolio's to get the trust of the people to ride their trades but this things is pure lies because the real situation happening is majority of them run a ponzi scheme and they release their pay-outs from the new deposits of their investors and they will run once they accumulate big amount of money. Although there's a legitimate site where they can trust who's offering this services but mostly the one promoted by now are those scams due to the referral commission gotten by the people who's willing to promote their schemes.

MLM-PYRAMID SCHEME

Mostly scammers used a car,money and any other just to make them appealing and lure people and this one should needed to avoid since for sure the one who earn with this scheme is on the top and the one under will cry later its because this scheme is so soft to collapsed and those late comers are mostly the one victimized from this scheme. We already see so many the same scheme like this and all of them turned scam so newbies should avoid those fake promises offered by mlm or networkers.

DOUBLER X2

This is famous before ang many people got victimized from this scheme and people should be careful from those platform who's offering this since there's no one can give a double profit in short time period and your money will end up scammed by those people who run this investment scheme so beware.

All of this are using the Ponzi scheme system and it doesn't mean that they pay their investors you can call them legit because that's their plan to gain your trust and accumulate mor investor to invest on there platform. So beware of any to good to be true offers since there are so many of those here.

There are also method on gambling which been used by scammers in recent years in crypto world:

Gambling game scams ^{[e.g. SCAM ALERT https://crypton.bet]}
^{The scammers will contact you thru social media apps and they will tell you that they are the moderator or admin in some certain gambling platform at they can choose on who's the winner in the game at they offer a split 50-50 on winnings but you need to deposit so that they will know that the one they contact is not a bot.
- Proof}

Quote from: serjent05 on February 03, 2020, 01:08:38 PM

Other than that newbies needed to be aware of the system used by the scammers to extort and to get a money from their victims. This example are called Golden opportunity gambling scam or di kaya ay make money fast scams. Based on researching it on google I saw so many schemes or strategy which are not decreasing but instead scammers are so innovative and create so many ways to scam people. So we should be careful on following:

Phishing email scams
The Nigerian scam
Greeting card scams
Bank loan or credit card scam
Lottery scam
Hitman scam
Online dating (romance) scams
Fake antivirus software
Facebook impersonation scam (hijacked profile scam)
Make money fast scams (Economic scams)

Explanation on the link ito

Mostly we can see this common scam scattering on internet.

Advance fee fraud
Lottery, sweepstakes and competition scams
Computer hacking
Online shopping, classified and auction scams
Banking, credit card and online account scams
Small business scams
Job and employment scams
Charity and medical scams

You can visit it here link na ito para sa mga paliwanag ng mga nabanggit.

IDENTITY USER [TELEGRAM SCAMMERS]

In this method the scammers copy the name of the admins,support or the CEO and they disguise to help you up on your issue or they give a special bonus when you deposit directly on the address they provided or a fee for the help they provide to you. So always verify and go to the official channel so that you will know the authentic admins since mostly they doesn't send a message first to the users.

SHITCOINS

Usually, Shitcoins are losing value compared to Bitcoin and it's rather risky for Beginners to decide to chose Shitcoins over Bitcoin. I've written an analysis here why holding BTC is less risky for Newbies: Is diversification into different coins really a good advice for Newbies?

And here a short explanation what's a shitcoin (not all Altcoins are shitcoin but 99% are):

- The coin does not offer any important added value compared to existing coins.
- The coin was mainly launched to bring financial gains to the issuers. (most ICO Shitcoins)
- Excessive marketing praising the coin as a "new Bitcoin" while the technology behind the coin doesn't justify that bold term.
- Centralized coins that deny this fact by their misleading marketing.
- The price is deliberately manipulated by the issuers, by false technical promises or unfair token economics with coins, which are misleadingly deducted from the current supply (high number of tokens (often locked) for the team), etc.
- Coins that undermine the liberal-democratic idea of Bitcoin. (centralized Shitcoins like XRP, Libra etc.)
- If the CEO is a proven liar. (Shitcoin SV)

SCAM ICO's

This is the most over used by now since crypto has gain huge popularity and many scammers ride use the opportunity to create their own scam coins/tokens so newbies the first thing you need to watch are this.

Important thing to check,

Team members Identity: Many ICO scammers use a fake identity and people must be aware for this since if they hide or take another persons identity for sure they are scam.
Whitepaper: Check proper if their whitepaper is not plagiarized and have a proper details.
Roadmap: You can check here on what is the plan of the team and where is the project heading in future so proper check if they already achieve on what is written since this could be a red flag if they didn't achieve their plans and jump out to another things.
Fake amount raised: Mostly scammers used this to boost their sales, They put a fake amount raised so that the investors who doubt to invest at them will find them worthy since they show a fake success on their stats.
Origin: Check the country origin since most of the scammers use a wrong location of their offices and fake origin of licenses.

Covid-19 SCAM

Quote from: Henri Cartier on April 15, 2020, 04:51:48 AM

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned Monday that fraudsters are about to unleash a surge of coronavirus cryptocurrency scams. Fraudsters are leveraging increased fear and uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic to steal your money and launder it through the complex cryptocurrency ecosystem.

FBI said that they are targeting people of all ages by various fraud schemes like Blackmail attempts by Threatening emails asking for personal information and demand payment in bitcoin to release that information. Also, they blackmail that they infect you and/or your family with coronavirus unless payment is sent to a Bitcoin wallet.

Work from home scams posing as remote workers collecting “donations” via email and safety equipment vendors working beyond established e-commerce, or even as “charities” that take cryptocurrency.

Although there are legitimate charities, investment platforms, and e-commerce sites that accept payment in cryptocurrency, the pressure to use a virtual currency should be considered a significant red flag.

FBI has given the following tips to protect yourself from frauds -

Verify that a vendor/charity is legitimate and accepts cryptocurrency before sending payments/donations.
Conduct extensive research on potential investment opportunities.
Do not use your personal bank accounts for a work-from-home business-related activity or provide your bank account information to someone who is not named on the account.
Contact law enforcement before paying out blackmail and/or extortion attempts and before converting your money into cryptocurrency to pay them.

This warning is the largest government level warning about COVID-19 Crypto Scams as the number of Scams has increased a lot around the globe. Other Crypto Scams related to the coronavirus are:

>> Chainalysis research indicates that Coronavirus has erased 33% of Crypto Scammers' Revenue.

Scammers are taking advantage of this critical pandemic situation also. In this serious situation, we all should be careful and protect ourselves from frauds. I am sharing this warning to know how scammers can take advantage of the situation and scam us. We should be aware of it!

Source:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-expects-a-rise-in-scams-involving-cryptocurrency-related-to-the-covid-19-pandemic
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-warns-covid-19-scammers-040000772.html
https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/covid-19-cryptocurrency-scams

FAKE AIRDROPS/GIVEAWAYS

The most common things you need to avoid on the platforms who conduct a airdop are the one who ask this following:

KYC: If you provide your personal details to the scammers you might gonna encounter a problem in future since they can use your identity for their future frauds,
Payments: Platform who ask payments for the drops are big red flag since if they are legit they shouldn't ask any conditions before giving it to their participants.
Private key: You will be possibly hacked by them if you mistakenly provide you private key and many people got caught on this so be vigilant always to protect your wallets a never give your private key to anyone.
Log in details: Never register on different platform using the same username,email and password since this can be used to hack your exchanger accounts and Web wallet accounts.

Local thread created: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5222714.0

If you have any known scam methods you can share it here to update the thread and help newbies identifies scams.

I like this topic which is about scams that newbies can easily fall for, my first scam experience was doubler, but I did not fall for it. Later was this robotrade that I even made thread about on this forum
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5236282.msg54117442#msg54117442

Trading suppose to be done with patience, and all analyses and how to make use of it must be learned rather than using robots to trade, robot traders will surely lose. Another one was on facebook and telegram through impersonation, one claiming to be from USA and the other Brazil.

I have written a lot about scam too and how someone can lose his cryptocurrencies or crypto wallet which you can see below

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5232577.msg54021683#msg54021683

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5235930.msg54107672#msg54107672

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=2776678;sa=showPosts

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5236282.msg54117442#msg54117442

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5238363.msg54169267#msg54169267

I made all these because I do not like to see someone even to be scammed.

You did great explaining the most popular scams, but newbies should understand that this is all is just basic and most common stuff, and scammers can be quite creative, so you should always be on your guard. If someone approaches you with an offer where you need to send them money to make more, there's 100% chance that it's a scam. In general they have one thing in common - they all offer an easy way to make money, but the truth is, there's no such thing, and even if there is, no one would share it with you.

On top of everything, just make sure that you never give any information about yourself to non-credible or even fake websites.

Because when you gave your personal information like email or phone number, that's the common way you will be contacted by scammers and they usually will lead you to a phishing website or any other scam method.

Not only that, but you will also need to be more careful with every information you get because there is a big possibility that your data has also spread on their network.

You can also include the fake give away scams [Warning] Phishing Cryptocurrency Website or fake trading scam [SCAM] Avrobit exchange (and all yellow clones) Alert.

If we want to make a complete list of scamming methods and techniques it will have no end, that many scams are filled in the internet world especially in cryptos so how can we avoid scamming rather than looking for what to avoid.FIrst we need to ask ourselves about the investment we are going to make "is that returns from this investment too good to be true?" and "by this way money-making is easier why there is not much people here?"

It's not a "scheme", but if you want, you can add another point to your list:

SHITCOINS

Quote from: 1miau on February 26, 2020, 12:55:47 AM

- The coin does not offer any important added value compared to existing coins.
- The coin was mainly launched to bring financial gains to the issuers. (most ICO Shitcoins)
- Excessive marketing praising the coin as a "new Bitcoin" while the technology behind the coin doesn't justify that bold term.
- Centralized coins that deny this fact by their misleading marketing.
- The price is deliberately manipulated by the issuers, by false technical promises or unfair token economics with coins, which are misleadingly deducted from the current supply (high number of tokens (often locked) for the team), etc.
- Coins that undermine the liberal-democratic idea of Bitcoin. (centralized Shitcoins like XRP, Libra etc.)
- If the CEO is a proven liar. (Shitcoin SV)

Damn, I remember my cloud mining days, there was site named hashprofit I invested some amount, thought it was legit, it was paying, good support, heck, I even thought of taking a loan and investing in it. Then puff, it gone.

i think it is a process inwhich everyone should pass but we have to be careful to avoid loosing so much funds. i lost a huge amount of money back in those days of ponzi. i lost in btc ponzi, MLM and so many other ponzis. i also try the mining of a thing and lost again after joining honest mining that claims he owns a cloud mining platform. i never for one day collected my money.

You forget to add scam ICO which is most use scam scheme today and the one you put on the list is the old scheme we use before.

Reasons for scam plagiarsm/ fake team/ fake product.

Another scam ive seen is fake exchange and fake gambling site.

You have explained it very clearly so if someone is very new to this community they can also aware of such kinds of scams. Also, you can add the fake coin and ICO which has done by some shady tokens, fake wallets.

Quote from: libert19 on April 16, 2020, 04:20:57 AM

I didn't invest in Hashprofit but I got caught buy hashocean before I really think that they are legit before since they are paying good to their investor for long period of time but guess all of them fall in the same faith so we should be aware on this kind of scheme since there's no reliable things on platforms who offers a good to be true offers to their investors.

Quote from: 1miau on April 15, 2020, 10:29:21 PM

-snip-

Thank you for your contribution and will look to the other suggestions and will add them soon.

Let's help newbies to determine scams and save their money.

Like someone on this thread said, scammers can get very creative in creating scam projects. Personally, I think that the best advice for anyone is - if something sounds too good to be true, then it is. That's it. As simple as that.

At a first check this seems to be missing from the list:

Another typical scam is where you are required to deposit an amount of money in order to withdraw an alleged bigger amount.
Sometimes the scam comes with people asking for your help to withdraw or even to loan them for the withdraw.
Obviously, if the "displayed" amount would be real, a part of it would be available for the fees.

Quote from: Taskford on April 16, 2020, 09:49:57 AM

Let's help newbies to determine scams and save their money.

It would be good if we could publish your post somewhere where a lot of those who are looking for fast and easy earnings will see it. But this is unfortunately impossible, and in most cases inexperienced people are fooled and most learn something from their own mistakes. This is sometimes not so bad, because if you lose $10 or $100 you will not get the chance to lose $500 or $1000, except in the case that someone is really persistent in losing their money.

It's really easy to protect yourself from scams, just do not trust to anyone who ask you money and when you're buying something use escrow (for crypto), and PayPal for fiat.

I would just add type of scam when people are trick to buy public coin address and import that address in watch-only wallet, and scammer is selling them story that they have bought some coin. Also some newbies buy forked BTC coins, because someone convinces them that this is real BTC.

When we consider all the known scams and the unknown, for some people the internet is literally like a minefield.

Quote from: Baofeng on April 15, 2020, 09:24:54 PM

You can also include the fake give away scams

Yes, those giveaway scams too.

But the scheme are those being posted on twitter and other social media channels (FB, YouTube).

"Send this xx amount to receive this xx amount".

Not just the copycat of exchanges do this but individuals too.

Quote from: libert19 on April 16, 2020, 04:20:57 AM

Oof. Did you manage to profit at least?

I want to add sh*tcoin exchanges on the list newbies should avoid it, I was a victim of it a long time ago, sometimes the scenario is, withdrawal is disabled, super huge withdrawal fees compared to top 10 exchanges, low and fake volume, lot of Bots, No customer support. Requires KYC with below $20 withdrawal. I guess one of it is Biup I don't recommend using an exchange like what I have mentioned.

Quote from: UserU on April 16, 2020, 11:49:35 AM

Quote from: libert19 on April 16, 2020, 04:20:57 AM

Oof. Did you manage to profit at least?

the cloud mining hype a couple of years ago when i started using bitcoin (back in 2014-2015) was identical to the ICO hype that we had during 2017 and it was equally scammy. that means the same way people made profit from ICO scams they could make profit from cloud mining scams too. it didn't make them any less bad though.
the only thing i have ever used was those sites that all you had to do was to sign up and they gave you free hashrate ...

Quote from: slackovic on April 16, 2020, 10:25:51 AM

I'll keep that advice in mind for the reason that I understand how dangerous it is to believe things that seems impossible to happen, like earning huge profit within a day. A person who lacks awareness regarding with the different techniques of fraudsters became the usual victims, like newbies. I've been seeing a lot of people getting persuaded by sweet offers, without the thought of losing money because of being greedy.