Devalued coin scam attempt, newbies please be aware!

[The Cryptovator]

As the title says, there are a few scammers (or a single scammer) trying to scam in a new way. It's new to me since I have seen such as attempt for the first time although this kind of scam isn't new in the forum. I will share the story.

I got a few PMs yesterday from several Telegram users. I have received PM from 3 individual users, but I am assuming it's a single person comparing writing style. They have asked me if I have any devalued coins to sell. When I receive this spam message then I realized a scammer trying to scam me. Then I said yes, I have a few devalued coins to sell. I just want to make sure they are a real scammer. Then I ask how the transaction will happen. So they provide me an escrow website called www.chesterpact.com. Then I realized that they will scam people with that website. I took a deep look at that website but didn't found any useful information at all. But eventually got a forum thread about this website, here is it. It's pretty clear there that the escrow website is a scam site. So, if you receive such as PM from any platform means you are going to get a scam if you make a deal with the scammer. Just don't be greedy for your devalued coins and don't lose them. Who knows if your devalued token sometimes becomes valuable assets. It's crypto and we don't know what will happen near future.

[Upgrade00]

Why would anyone who got an unsolicited message from a stranger on the internet choose to trade with them on an escrow platform they are not familiar with (considering the point of an escrow service is trust)? The only reason I can think of is greed, as it offers an attempt to cash out on the shitcoins they hold in their wallet.

Just don't be greedy for your devalued coins and don't lose them. Who knows if your devalued token sometimes becomes valuable assets. It's crypto and we don't know what will happen near future.

The scam may not be about the coins, after user sends them, the scammers would promise an unreaslistic amount for them and then come up with a bogus reason to lock up the funds requesting xxx amount of Bitcoin or ETH to confirm the payment.

[Charles-Tim]

Why would anyone who got an unsolicited message from a stranger on the internet choose to trade with them on an escrow platform they are not familiar with (considering the point of an escrow service is trust)? The only reason I can think of is greed, as it offers an attempt to cash out on the shitcoins they hold in their wallet.

With what I have noticed, I think scam is beyond greediness, most people that have no knowledge or experience about this can be become victim. People needs education about scam, what our government do not give us, they rather prefer to deprive us of our privacy when they are not educating people on how to avoid scam with real life examples. It will be good if people can be visiting forums like bitcointalk.org, but there are still far many people that do not know how scam can occur because they do not visit forums like Bitcointalk.

I recently like watching celebrity shows that focus more on how to avoid scam, but only few I have watched on YouTube. I believe celebrities can also help in educating people how to avoid scam.

[Rikafip]

Why would anyone who got an unsolicited message from a stranger on the internet choose to trade with them on an escrow platform they are not familiar with (considering the point of an escrow service is trust)? The only reason I can think of is greed, as it offers an attempt to cash out on the shitcoins they hold in their wallet.

Of course they count on greed, what else. Let's not kid ourselves, vast majority of people that ate into crypto because of they possibility to make some money, and not because they are into all that financial freedom story or the tech part of it. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, but crypto investors are perfect targets and that's why we see so many scam attempts. And then you add constant influx of new people that are not aware of all the dangers, and you get what we have now.

Rule of thumb: someone sends you unsolicited PM on Telegram=scam.

[Pmalek]

Devalued as in non-listed coins?

That's new to me, and I haven't heard about such a scam technique before. The first alarm would be why would someone be interested in purchasing bags of worthless coins if those assets can't be sold or have no liquidity? There are better ways to gamble.

If it's only about those worthless coins, even if you lost them, it wouldn't be the end of the world. But maybe that escrow site will ask for your private keys/seed and the whole point is to steal more valuable assets. Or if forces you to install some malware or add-ons whose aim is to extract your private info.

The whole point of an escrow is that both members trust that same person. Anyone requiring an escrow, should contact one of those available on Bitcointalk, and not someone from an unknown site no one has heard of. 

[PerfectCircle]

I credit you for even sparing your time to listen to what a stranger have to say, for me it's a whole new level because I don't even give room for discussion with strangers, I block them off instantly with a single message pointing to them as scammers, why would anyone try to reach out to you this days? 99% of strangers are ready to use you for something

[Upgrade00]

With what I have noticed, I think scam is beyond greediness, most people that have no knowledge or experience

Sure, scam is beyond knowledge or experience and more education would help, but there are some easy to detect ones, where the scammers prey on the greed of people.
• If someone offered to buy something from you at a value far above what it is actually worth, rather than immediately celebrating, ask yourself why the person is willing to pay that amount,
• Also, if someone wants to sell you a service or good at a far lower price than it is worth, it should raise some red flags immediately. If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

[Charles-Tim]

Sure, scam is beyond knowledge or experience and more education would help, but there are some easy to detect ones, where the scammers prey on the greed of people.
• If someone offered to buy something from you at a value far above what it is actually worth, rather than immediately celebrating, ask yourself why the person is willing to pay that amount,
• Also, if someone wants to sell you a service or good at a far lower price than it is worth, it should raise some red flags immediately. If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

Yes, I did agree to your opinion. You are right, most people are even greedy by nature, but it is the experience and knowledge they have that do help. Paying 2 to get 4 is really too good to be true, I also wonder why people should trust such scam, also someone unkown to contact me through telegram discussing with me about a business is obviously a scam too. I totally agree with you, I just make my comment just as an addition of how educating people can also help.

[sheenshane]

Thank you for sharing this, this is new to me, even though it's obvious that it has a red flag since the scammer offers an escrow service even though he is a buyer, and not by the OP.  IMO, Telegram is full of bogus activities we should be careful if we receive bogus PMs from unknown users offering something good on the internet.

If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

This is most commonly we encountered if there's a scammer and I tend to agree with this and greed people will always fall into their trap.  We should always have verification when we receive an offer that it seems good to be true.

We're so lucky because we know their strategies here about their scamming style.  We should be vigilant in dealing with people on the internet special like the OP that already well known as a campaign manager of course many of them attempting to scam them.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

It seems the scam has been going on for some time and there are so many other fake online escrow sites scammers use to lure the victims.
One of the members Identified the scam last year but only put a warning in his thread

I hope everyone has a nice holiday season.  As a warning, be aware there are several individuals working Telegram for coins making outrageous offers to buy coins.  It really is too good to be true.  They are scammers.  Eventually, they will direct you to one of several "escrow" sites that look legit, but are nothing but a store front to steal your coins.

Some of theses are transactwise.co.uk, chesterpact.com and exchangecrib.com.  All are run by same group of scammers - so beware. The last one is brand new only registered a few weeks ago and the first tow have been around for months and already have scam alerts posted on them.  Please spread this word to other coins that you are aware of that have followings on Telegram. Again - happy holidays to you all and have a safe and happy new year.

They just copied and pasted from payfare, another escrow service which seems to have been around for quite some time.

[Little Mouse]

This is not new, man. This scammer will try to redirect on the escrow website and later on, escrow website will ask for a little deposit which is the profit of the scammer. The website owns by the scammer actually.

Devalued as in non-listed coins?

That's new to me, and I haven't heard about such a scam technique before. The first alarm would be why would someone be interested in purchasing bags of worthless coins if those assets can't be sold or have no liquidity? There are better ways to gamble.

Many people do it. I have seen people to make good returns on such bets even. I had acted role as escrow in a lot of deals in my local group. People used to exchange their bounty tokens which have no value.
In 2019, I remember I had acted as escrow in a deal where 50k MB8 coin was exchanged for bdt 1 each. After a few days, buyer was able to sell it for bdt 12 each if I can remember correctly. That's a big gain of course.

[Darker45]

A site to scam devalued coins? What would they gain from having stacked coins without value?

OP is not giving us actual details of how the site would actually scam the coin holders. But if it is only by getting those worthless shitcoins and withholding payment in the end, I don't think I'd be crying over it. In the first place, those are devalued coins. Secondly, if there is someone interested to buy them, the price would definitely be very low. After all, what is being bought is a coin of no value. So if they are trying to scam me with $1 or $2, I'd give it to them. In fact, if somebody would ask for more old worthless shitcoins, I'd probably give them more.

But, as Pmalek surmised, there might be other motives aside from scamming devalued coins.

[pooya87]

A site to scam devalued coins? What would they gain from having stacked coins without value?

Only dead coins have no value. The rest of the shitcoins that are not yet dead are being traded somewhere on some shitty exchange like Yobit or some shitty token swap platform built on top of ethereum where you can swap one garbage for another usually ETH itself.

[Pmalek]

A site to scam devalued coins? What would they gain from having stacked coins without value?

If they buy them far below the market value, they can make a good profit if they manage to sell them as soon as bitcoin and other alts start to appreciate in value.

What Little Mouse said also makes sense. The escrow site probably belongs to the same person/people. You might be required to make a deposit as a token of good will that you have good intentions. That safety deposit would be returned to you at the conclusion of the deal, and that could be what the scammers are after.

[The Cryptovator]

A site to scam devalued coins? What would they gain from having stacked coins without value?

OP is not giving us actual details of how the site would actually scam the coin holders. But if it is only by getting those worthless shitcoins and withholding payment in the end, I don't think I'd be crying over it. In the first place, those are devalued coins. Secondly, if there is someone interested to buy them, the price would definitely be very low. After all, what is being bought is a coin of no value. So if they are trying to scam me with $1 or $2, I'd give it to them. In fact, if somebody would ask for more old worthless shitcoins, I'd probably give them more.

Devalued doesn't mean dead. Because dead or newly created coins don't have any value. They encourage to buy Devalued, which means it doesn't have much value at the moment. For example, you hold a few shitcoin whose current price is $10 and they will offer you something near or above $10. So when you send the coins to the escrow website, means you have been scammed. Now think, if they could manage thousands of peoples like this then they will have a decent amount. If you create a coin yourself and want to sell with them, then it will not happen at all. Because they will never buy it. After you tell them a coin name, they search it where it's listed and the current price. I realized it when their reply was quite slower.

[Oceat]

If it's too good to be true then avoid it and never trust someone that you met for the first time. They should have at least a reputation first before you can even trade to them. I knew some guys like these before I just don't trust them easily that's why I never entertain them because I know I won't be getting any from them either. I don't waste time people that who PM without any reputation or so that doesn't benefit me either.

[pakhitheboss]

The last part was good "don't be greedy". People get scammed because they are greedy that is the fact. Scammers are innovating everyday. This is kind of scam is brand new to me. Thanks for the heads-up OP.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Thanks for your warning. I do not trust other users in the telegram at all, since in addition to direct fraud, today there are risks of breaking through information about the user who owns the telegram account. Telegram has never been anonymous, and the relevance of breaking through the information of the accounts of this forum does not become less interesting for hackers. When I suddenly receive a message from a stranger, it already starts to bother me, not to mention the subject of the message. 

[The Cryptovator]

Bumping this thread with an update.
Seems scammers still continue their activities about buying devalued coins. Mostly they are targeting Telegram crypto-related groups. 2 days back I have received another PM from scammers, I don't have enough time to play with him. So I just ignore and report it. So guys just be careful from this scammer.

[Taskford]

Bumping this thread with an update.
Seems scammers still continue their activities about buying devalued coins. Mostly they are targeting Telegram crypto-related groups. 2 days back I have received another PM from scammers, I don't have enough time to play with him. So I just ignore and report it. So guys just be careful from this scammer.

This is seems obvious scams but I don't really entertain any message came from unknown person especially if he's offering something which I think quite questionable.

But the one I encounter recently is the buyer and seller modus.

The other one pmed me to sell his token which is not listed on exchange and sell it for cheap then the other one pmed me stating that he want to buy at higher price and I know this kind of tactic before so I pressumed that this is scam so newbies should really need to be careful on different type of scams happening in this space.