Scam Alert - CBOT / Cryptogro / Instagram Fake User

[lor3kcaj]

Hi fellow good people,

I was recently scammed by a fake IG user, introducing me to this sham crypto platform known as Cryptogro, then changed to CBOT.

Would like to post my story here, so that good innocent people are aware and don't fall into the similar plight as I do. I lost around 100K USDT, super painful experience. Please do not trust anyone from social channels, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok etc

https://crypto-cybersecurity.blogspot.com/2022/02/crypto-scam-alert-cryptogro-cbot.html

I have filed an official Police report with our local Police, hopefully they could help, which I have very very low expectations anything could happen.

I hope the moderators and users here could help to share the article, trying to get as much reach as possible so that the scammers get hit in their operations.

Thanks a million.

[1714997771]

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[1714997771]

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[logfiles]

I hope the moderators and users here could help to share the article, trying to get as much reach as possible so that the scammers get hit in their operations.

Why not post the full story here?

How you trusted someone on Instagram with 100K USDT beats my understanding 
And what was so special with the exchange that you used it instead of the more trustworthy, popular exchanges we have today?

[lor3kcaj]

hey logfiles,

The full story is on my blog article, it has screenshots of the scam crypto website and mobile apps. It is kind of tag long to type into a post.

https://crypto-cybersecurity.blogspot.com/2022/02/crypto-scam-alert-cryptogro-cbot.html

How you trusted someone on Instagram with 100K USDT beats my understanding << you are freaking right? I am totally bewildered now as well, I guess I was totally blinded with greed and sheer foolishness. In fact, I did tried to withdraw 3 times from this sham platform back to Huobi, and they worked. I would say these scammers really know how to play mind games to fool/trick victims into their ploy.

Alright, you can say that i am sheer stupid. I still cannot understand my mind as well, although at the back of my mind something is sounding, but I still went ahead. pure dumbness.

[holydarkness]

I hope the moderators and users here could help to share the article, trying to get as much reach as possible so that the scammers get hit in their operations.

Why not post the full story here?

Was wondering the same, especially as the story is not that long and OP has already made a well written chronology of the accident on his blog. My best guess would be this post served two purposes: to report the unfortunate event that OP got and to promote their blog --I honestly can't think of another reason why redirecting readers to the blog and not just copying the entire article here; well, I'm not saying that the practice is not allowed or wrong, just stating the obvious-- given the blog is about scams happened in crypto world --three articles so far. If I may say... it's quite ironic, someone who tried to raise awareness of scam got scammed... LOL?

Anyway, as a good citizen of crypto community, I dive through the --again-- story that's not too long and could be simply copy-pasted into a post here, the tl;dr were:

OP got a message from random user on Instagram, claiming that she's a senior accountant, promoting a new exchange site, tried to play with fire by depositing and withdrawing several times at low amount, and suddenly they gave rules that if you made profit that is larger than the amount you deposited into the site, they'll charge a 20% tax that can only be paid by transfer, deducting from his wallet's balance is not an option. Thus, OP can't do his final withdrawal.

The full story, snipping the whole introduction and scammer's IG profile as it is clear that the profile is fake goes:

Around late Dec 2021, Started off with a very small amount transferred into Cryptogro platform, made some profit and did a withdrawal successfully back to a well known crypto exchange, Huobi. Started to increase funds to trade and made some profits, then still quite unsure, skeptical about this Cryptogro platform, so did another withdrawal successfully.

Out of a sudden, chenxialing mentioned that CBOT has bought over Cryptogro, so we need to transfer our account balance from Cryptogro to CBOT. This was the part that is strange, because there isn't any news about the acquisition of Cryptogro by CBOT at all and the strange thing was there was a minimum transaction limit in order to do withdrawal, but this transfer from Cryptogro to CBOT does not has this limit. Nevertheless, the transfer from Cryptogro to CBOT was successful, able to do a successful small withdrawal.

On CBOT, followed chenxialing's calls to make several trades and made quite a fair bit of profits, she then suddenly remembered that if the profits made was more than the invested amount, there will be a 20% personal tax on my account balance in order to withdraw any funds! And the tax cannot be deducted from my account balance, unless new funds are transferred into the platform.



That's when a realisation that something is very fishy! Checked around with some other Crypto traders and they all caution against paying this personal tax. When attempted to do withdrawal, this error message was shown:



After this, chenxialing stopped replying me on Instagram and LINE, even the Customer Support within CBOT don’t respond.

SCAMMED!

Please be careful, do research before you invest your funds or trust anyone that reach out to you online or any social channels.

One question for the OP though, was the 100K USD you claimed you lost is the amount you deposited into their exchange, or was it the sum of what you deposited and the profit you made? If it's the latter, then the actual amount scammed is not 100K.

I am leaning toward a very likely scenario where their trading platform is rigged so you'll easily made profit to lure you into trusting them. Thus, let's say you deposited 1,000 USD and made 99,000 usd of trading "profit", the total amount scammed is not actually 100K, but rather 1,000.


All in all, as this thread's role is to warn people who do their DD of potential scam by typing certain keywords into the search engine, I'll wrote some key factors here so anyone typing this on google --or duckduckgo-- will get this thread on their search result.

scammers name: (allegedly) chenxialing 陈曉玲
scamming method: contacting through DM, LINE chat, and WhatsApp with these numbers +1 (406) 319-5868 and +1 (706) 578-8023

[lor3kcaj]

hi @holydarkness,

Saw the very faint liner. Yes, I am the victim that was being scammed that is raising awareness.

Thanks for copying the content over and summarising.

In respond to "I am leaning toward a very likely scenario where their trading platform is rigged so you'll easily made profit to lure you into trusting them. Thus, let's say you deposited 1,000 USD and made 99,000 usd of trading "profit", the total amount scammed is not actually 100K, but rather 1,000.", according to the screenshot, the customer told me to pay USD101680, that's 20% of the account balance. I invested around 100K USDT and followed chenxialing 陈曉玲 to flip to around 500+K USDT (which obviously everything is fake now). See below screenshot as evidence:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi5zpb4ZyCpZZYzgPa6p-0cjPcfX6J4gN9jYpNo3uk9BcxVdwrKtSdXVbejTrnRIijRKjlBPHA-oWSm6yvBBW8ahDLkT4sM5G-cLsqUtspsyvYVEek72ptLfbwfirhKl8PN3q8aZuGyJG7oOF14ErXQZXtNhmfYZUfmSa1JZTTmR11LfojIIg1LalKS4w=s320
(sorry, i don't know how to add an image inline)

[ScamViruS]

Why do you trust this Instagram account where the number of followers of that user is very small. Because of the amount of transactions that you are talking about, trusting an Instagram account in this way, joining any platform and making large amount of transactions does not seem reasonable to me.

[lor3kcaj]

I now ponder as well, with much much regret.

Not sure what the heck was in my mind then, I could have filtered it away, not sure what i started have conversation on WhatsApp with her. Tested with very small amount on the platform and above to withdraw successfully back, probably since then my defence system went down.

Got suspiciously 2x more times, but still able to withdraw successfully.

Definitely not due to lust or having any sly convo, on hindsight, I guess it was greed of the investment returns, which locked me in and then screwed ball.

For people reading this thread, if you have this suspicious feeling in your heart or mind or any cell in your body, please trust it. Don't get blindly like me. FUG me.

[Potato Chips]

I now ponder as well, with much much regret.

Not sure what the heck was in my mind then, I could have filtered it away, not sure what i started have conversation on WhatsApp with her. Tested with very small amount on the platform and above to withdraw successfully back, probably since then my defence system went down.

It's totally possible you may have responded to them on a whim and ended up falling deeper into the pit due to their manipulation tricks. Take note that the person you've exchanged with could be highly trained for it, see this leaked (apparently 80-page) training manual for this scheme.

[lor3kcaj]

hey @Potato Chips, thanks so much for sharing the evil manipulation pig butchering scam scheme, from the article that you have shared, I found a local support group, consisting of many victims, we are working with our local police dept on investigation and fbi in hopes of getting the scammers discovered and exposed! Should any victims out there reading this forum post and you require help / advice / support - you can visit http://globalantiscam.org for more info.

Thank you again @Potato Chip, if I have known of such highly trained manipulative scammers, this wouldn't be such a costly & painful lesson.

[astrox411]

Thanks OP for sharing your story. Mine is similar but unfortunately I found out too late and I lost much more than you from CBOT.  It appears that different scam team members use different URLs which point to the same web app.  In my case, it is https://cbotcen.com. 

Like you, they gained my trust after allowing a withdrawal.  Since the charge is 1%, I went small, but the alarms went off after subsequent withdrawals did not work, and I was given stupid reasons for the failures.  They eventually stopped responding to my support queries, and I knew at this point I have been slaughtered.  They are now trying to extort additional money from me, saying I have to pay 200K to get my "credit rating" up to 100.  It was in fact 100 until I started complaining about inability to withdraw, then they suddenly reduced it by 20 points "because of multiple withdrawal attempts".  They claimed the system does it automatically, but the log says the reduction happened at the same time I made my query. 

I have already filed a report with local police and a complaint with FBI, but I am doubtful there is any help or recovery coming.  I am now just focusing on how I can at least deduct it on my taxes.  My initial research does not give hope since theft losses are not deductible.  I have some hope that I can claim it as a "rug pull" which may be considered a capital loss. 

[Potato Chips]

I am now just focusing on how I can at least deduct it on my taxes.  My initial research does not give hope since theft losses are not deductible.  I have some hope that I can claim it as a "rug pull" which may be considered a capital loss. 

That could be a way to minimize losses but can be another problem if done wrong. I suggest consulting a local CPA who has experience with crypto taxes, this list could help: https://cointracking.info/law/.

[logfiles]

Thanks OP for sharing your story. Mine is similar but unfortunately I found out too late and I lost much more than you from CBOT.  It appears that different scam team members use different URLs which point to the same web app.  In my case, it is https://cbotcen.com. 

Like you, they gained my trust after allowing a withdrawal.  Since the charge is 1%, I went small, but the alarms went off after subsequent withdrawals did not work, and I was given stupid reasons for the failures.  They eventually stopped responding to my support queries, and I knew at this point I have been slaughtered.  They are now trying to extort additional money from me, saying I have to pay 200K to get my "credit rating" up to 100.  It was in fact 100 until I started complaining about inability to withdraw, then they suddenly reduced it by 20 points "because of multiple withdrawal attempts".  They claimed the system does it automatically, but the log says the reduction happened at the same time I made my query. 

I have already filed a report with local police and a complaint with FBI, but I am doubtful there is any help or recovery coming.  I am now just focusing on how I can at least deduct it on my taxes.  My initial research does not give hope since theft losses are not deductible.  I have some hope that I can claim it as a "rug pull" which may be considered a capital loss. 

Do not send them any additional money. The truth is that there is nothing in your account except just figures.

About the taxes. I am not so sure about the taxing policies in your Country but what I have always known is that they mostly tax capital gains, not losses including money lost to scams

It's a blunt scam where you sent money and lost. Not an investment where there was any hope of making gains.

[BitMaxz]

Thanks OP for sharing your story. Mine is similar but unfortunately I found out too late and I lost much more than you from CBOT.  It appears that different scam team members use different URLs which point to the same web app.  In my case, it is https//suspcious-link.com.  

~snip~

I suggest you better don't help them to get a link(backlink) here because that way you are helping them to promote the website you just simply remove this below so that it won't link here.

Code:

https://

~snip~

Same to you don't quote the post that includes the scam website because there is a big help in that website to boost in rankings if you have knowledge about SEO you shouldn't help them to get a link(Backlink) here. If they have a link here on the forum they can easily rank up on the SERP(Google) and more people will be a victim of their scheme.

[Potato Chips]

About the taxes. I am not so sure about the taxing policies in your Country but what I have always known is that they mostly tax capital gains, not losses including money lost to scams

They were talking about reducing the taxes they owe by declaring losses. If eligible (since not every loss is tax deductible), a portion of their taxable income would be reduced.

[astrox411]

Thanks everyone for the advice on taxes.  According to the tax section at http://globalantiscam.org it appears this type of scam can be considered a ponzi scheme and is 95% deductible (USA) if no recovery occurs.  Still I will check out https://cointracking.info/law/ as Potato Chips suggests.  I see conflicting information regarding deduct-ability. 

BitMaxz, you make a very good point about not feeding their rankings by providing a backlink. I should have just wrote 'cbotcen'.  My original thought was that putting in the link would allow future folks to find this thread and identify the site as a scam.  My initial google search on the URL and 'cbot' did not turn up anything suspicious.  I only found this thread after searching again later after it was too late.  It would have saved me.

My testing indicated that there are personal URLs pointing to CBOT instances and any activity on a given URL gets reported to a particular handler.  I won't say here how I found this out, but lor3kcaj mentioning cbotour site in the blog post confirmed it for me.  I would also note that I found cbotcen site was created in early April of this year despite the cbot copyright statement going back to 2018.  One of the first flags raising my suspicion.  In any case, I am expecting them to kill the web site soon since they are at risk if they allow time for investigation from Law Enforcement.  Killing it would be the next step if they were following the playbook described in this video about pig butchering scams:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V95fbNNonAw&t=21s
The vid describes it pretty closely so far, and notes that the next to last step is to demand a fee of some sort in order to get funds released.  I will not be doing that :-/

[pctiger]

Just like astrox411, I’ve scammed by Cbotcen website and it’s asking me to pay 20% capital gains tax separately rather than withholding directly from my account balance! I’m still in contact with my crypto mentor who introduced this website to me and urging me to pay the tax. I’ve already file a complaint to FBI IC3, but do not expect them to respond immediately. Should I continue to stay in contact with my mentor as not to alert her?

[pctiger]

BTW, another url Cbotage also point to the same scam site!!!

[pctiger]

astrox411, I've enabled newbie to send me personal messages. Feel free if you want to chat via personal messages to share scam experience. Thanks.

[ScamViruS]

Just like astrox411, I’ve scammed by Cbotcen website and it’s asking me to pay 20% capital gains tax separately rather than withholding directly from my account balance! I’m still in contact with my crypto mentor who introduced this website to me and urging me to pay the tax. I’ve already file a complaint to FBI IC3, but do not expect them to respond immediately. Should I continue to stay in contact with my mentor as not to alert her?

It would be nice to share how you found out about Ree's website. This is because there are a lot of scammers online nowadays and they are trying different ways to scam crypto users. Since you have already fallen into their trap and become a victim of this scam.

So now you have to wait until you get an update on the result of the complaint. Social media is now in the hands of scammers, so any type of offer should be investigated in detail.

[pctiger]

My scam journey is similar to lor3kcaj. It started with a LINE chat to my phone number by mistake and started a friendly chat and eventually got curious about crypto future trading on the fake CBOT exchange and invested more and more money due to greed and now am out of over $1 million IRA money invested in the fake website and can't withdraw the balance unless I paid the tax which is final kill in the so called pig butchering scam scenario.
I hope my experience served as a warning to others and save them from falling to the scam in time. Looked like cbotcen website will be shutdown as soon as the final butchering phase is complete. Unfortunately, the FBI won't respond in time to catch them while the site is still active

[Potato Chips]

I’ve already file a complaint to FBI IC3, but do not expect them to respond immediately. Should I continue to stay in contact with my mentor as not to alert her?

Unfortunately reporting doesn't mean it will be investigated but the bigger the case becomes the more likely it is to gain their attention.

astrox411, I've enabled newbie to send me personal messages. Feel free if you want to chat via personal messages to share scam experience. Thanks.

One of the main reasons why this pig butchering scams worked is because the victims were in a closed space called PMs where outside opinions are less likely to go thru, hence it's not a good idea for anyone here to immediately slide into people's PMs unless we're talking about information that is not suited in public communities.

[astrox411]

Just like astrox411, I’ve scammed by Cbotcen website and it’s asking me to pay 20% capital gains tax separately rather than withholding directly from my account balance! I’m still in contact with my crypto mentor who introduced this website to me and urging me to pay the tax. I’ve already file a complaint to FBI IC3, but do not expect them to respond immediately. Should I continue to stay in contact with my mentor as not to alert her?

First I got withdrawal errors "Filed to verify" (misspelling).  Flag!
Subsequent withdrawal attempts just stuck in pending.  The handler and support chat people implied I had to complete advanced id verification. Actually sounds normal.
It took 2 weeks for advanced verification to be approved but withdrawals were still getting stuck in pending.  This time, the handler said I have to pay 100K for 'VIP access'.  At the same time, the support chat handler said I had to pay 200K to get my 'credit rating' up to 100. So many layers of BS were piling up by this time, I knew I was toast.

When I reported it to local police, the officer told me of another guy caught in a similar scam a week earlier who reported when he already lost 500K.  They told him don't pay more, but he did anyway, to try and get his money.  He ended up losing 1.1M.  Don't pay!  They have a whole handbook of excuses to get more money.

[astrox411]

My scam journey is similar to lor3kcaj. It started with a LINE chat to my phone number by mistake and started a friendly chat and eventually got curious about crypto future trading on the fake CBOT exchange and invested more and more money due to greed and now am out of over $1 million IRA money invested in the fake website and can't withdraw the balance unless I paid the tax which is final kill in the so called pig butchering scam scenario.
I hope my experience served as a warning to others and save them from falling to the scam in time. Looked like cbotcen website will be shutdown as soon as the final butchering phase is complete. Unfortunately, the FBI won't respond in time to catch them while the site is still active

Mine was same scenario and app, and my conclusion about FBI response is same as yours.  They wanted me to hit up my retirement funds as well but I was already on to them by that time.  Sorry your number is so big, pctiger. I thought mine was bad. Still, they ruined me.