Have you ever been scammed ?

[tech30338]

Of course, there are many forms of scams, and scammed people have different profiles. At first I thought people who were scammed were too naive or too greedy, but in reality scams are diverse. Perhaps we could list the different forms of scam and, if need be, tell our own story to help others protect themselves. Don't forget to report scammers in the dedicated topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0). Don't hesitate to tell me or correct me if I've made a mistake in my list.

1. There are the naive scammed, who haven't read enough about how to protect themselves and will simply give their private keys to a stranger who claims to help them.

2. There are the CEX scammed. MtGox, FTX etc ..., they can be beginners or experts.

3. Greedy scammed. Those who were promised crazy returns without doing anything. (Bitconnect for example or Madoff in TradFi))

4. Romantic scammed. A "nice" meeting on the Internet, some nice promises, and the romantic scammed are relieved of their funds.

5. The tired scammed, drunk, drugged or simply distracted by the kids doing bullshit next to him/her. A bit out of his depth, he won't realize that he's on a phising site for example.

6. The betrayed scammed. Whether a beginner or an expert, the betrayed scammed has trusted someone (friend, colleague, lover...) and lost his or her funds.

7. The shitcoin scammed. He/she bought lots of shitcoins on an obscure Pump and Dump group.

8. the sim-swap scammed (https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-phone-theft-sim-swap-identity-theft-investigation-2023-4?r=US&IR=T). Beginner or expert, the victim is deprived of all access from one minute to the next. The ease of the hack seems to depend on the country.

9. The clipboard virus scammed. In that case LoyceV explained that (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190776.0) :

How it works
1. You select a Bitcoin address, and press CTRL-C.
2. The malware changes the address to an address owned by the hacker/scammer.
3. You press CTRL-V and lose any funds you send.
Even if you check part of the pasted Bitcoin address, chances are the first few characters are the same, and you still won't notice the address was changed.

10. The social media scammed. A friend has his twitter account hacked and asks all the victim's contacts for money. Or a VIP has his account hacked and promises a giveaway (it's like you send me an ETH and I'll send you 2 back, it sounds crazy but some people believe it).

11. The scam application scammed. (it's getting a little weird my inventions of words  ). Victims, attracted by the fear of having to pay a fine or attracted by a supposed gift, will scan a QR-code or click on a fraudulent link (classic phishing). Then, if the victim downloads a fraudulent application and validates the authorizations, then the scammer will take control of the smartphone and possession of the wallets and bank accounts. => https://upgradedtamilan.com/an-ordinary-cup-of-tea-cost-a-woman-from-singapore-1-5-million-rubles/

Am I forgetting any?

Has this happened to you or someone you know ?

Romantic scam my friend, encounter this where the scammer is sweet, showing money, and portfolio, he also send small amount of money to lure my friend even  creating an account saying to put amount of money, he scan scam like 700 usd, already told him its too good to be true , also ask me to put money, because its profitable, but from the start I told him its a scam he never listen, too bad he had to learn it the hard way, instead of listening to me, I have save lots of his friends, because they are ready to pour large amount because of the profit, luckily she got busted because of lots of questioning and disappear with the money.

[Dunamisx]

If you had ever tasted scam before you will know what it means and how to make your crypto assets have a guaranteed security measures, most of the scam related cases are associated to how we also contributed to them happening, if we don't give way for most of the scam related cases, we cannot be scammed without inviting them in the first place, we have to know how we can maintain a perfect security measures over our crypto assets.

[Mpamaegbu]

One time, I got scammed by someone when I was doing an OTC trade, exchanging a few fiat money for 13 USDT. I'm going to name him as "Miskrib". Anyway I don't do deals with unknown people, but this guy is an admin from a group and is a really legit guy. However, I didn't really DM him before, so he approached me. And of course, I was idiotic enough not to check his profile, which had an username as "Miskrlb". So, what's the difference here in usernames? All he had to do was just change one letter to an L in lowercase to make it seem legit profile.

That was a clever hoodwink. I had to zoom in before I saw it was an L in lowercase in there. The way I overcome something like this is by saving the contact in my own way, usually admins and escrows. I know they're the ones who are often the target of cloning/impersonation. So, once I'm in such a group I save the contact of anyone I would do business with and how I want them to appear. That way, I fear nothing once it comes from that user. With that you can easily spot an imposter and report or expose them to warn others. 

[ultrloa]

If you had ever tasted scam before you will know what it means and how to make your crypto assets have a guaranteed security measures, most of the scam related cases are associated to how we also contributed to them happening,

If you had been scam once I think that's not enough case for you to learn many things about what other things need to avoid since you need to experience or learn from other experience so that you can learn more about how to safekeep your money away from scams. Good thing we have great places like this forum where we can learn a lot of things or get new refreshers since it help us get updated on new methods use by scammers.

[lixer]

If you had ever tasted scam before you will know what it means and how to make your crypto assets have a guaranteed security measures, most of the scam related cases are associated to how we also contributed to them happening,

If you had been scam once I think that's not enough case for you to learn many things about what other things need to avoid since you need to experience or learn from other experience so that you can learn more about how to safekeep your money away from scams. Good thing we have great places like this forum where we can learn a lot of things or get new refreshers since it help us get updated on new methods use by scammers.

So you mean that a person needs to get scammed multiple times in order to understand that they shouldn't trust anyone over the internet no matter what they say or what they want to offer them? I don't think that a person needs to become a victim of more than one scam scandal in order to understand that they always need to be vigilant when they are using the internet and have money on them because scammers are always looking for prey to hunt.

One might not learn all the ways scammers scam people everywhere on the internet if they get scammed once, but once you face that situation, you will at least be more cautious and will obviously lose trust in any strange people or websites that you encounter anywhere on the internet.

[bakasabo]

I am not much of an investor, so I was never got scammed by investing in a scam project. But in the past, I was scammed numerous times by projects that ran bounties. I would say the majority projects I participated were scam (for me, a project that raised a lot and still failed to achieve milestones is a scam for me). I was scammed for time.

[isaac_clarke22]

I am not much of an investor, so I was never got scammed by investing in a scam project. But in the past, I was scammed numerous times by projects that ran bounties. I would say the majority projects I participated were scam (for me, a project that raised a lot and still failed to achieve milestones is a scam for me). I was scammed for time.

Not sure if you're still talking about crypto, most of them back in the days especially in 2017 when ICOs were kinda hot topic. I can still remember 3 months of wasted time just to end up in a shitcoin that you couldn't even pay your electric bills in the first month with it. They're more like a side gig than a "real job".

Even though you didn't pay anything, they still got the benefit of exposure.

If you had ever tasted scam before you will know what it means and how to make your crypto assets have a guaranteed security measures, most of the scam related cases are associated to how we also contributed to them happening,

If you had been scam once I think that's not enough case for you to learn many things about what other things need to avoid since you need to experience or learn from other experience so that you can learn more about how to safekeep your money away from scams. Good thing we have great places like this forum where we can learn a lot of things or get new refreshers since it help us get updated on new methods use by scammers.

Scammers would still improvise. I can recall scambaiters like Kitboga and Jim Browning commentating that there are just plenty of crypto scams out there other than that usual refund scam.

[KingsDen]

I am not much of an investor, so I was never got scammed by investing in a scam project. But in the past, I was scammed numerous times by projects that ran bounties. I would say the majority projects I participated were scam (for me, a project that raised a lot and still failed to achieve milestones is a scam for me). I was scammed for time.

This is opposite of my story because I avoided bounties and even common airdrop I do not collect, I had the mindset of investment and it was there that I got scammed majorly. I am yet to see anyone who hasn't been scammed in this cryptocurrency industry from their newbie days. The market is full of scam and I do not blame newbies who fall for them. But I only blame them when the scam is so lame and they fall for it.

[Lida93]

Yes, I have been scammed once for $5,000. I was paying from my Ledger Hardware Wallet to Exchange for a quick P2P Withdraw and I realized I sent it to some address which has exactly same first 5 characters and last 5 characters similar to my Exchange Deposit Address. The attack which was done on me was Address Poisoning. I just copied the address from my Recent Transaction History on Ledger and sent $5k USDT. I still feel ashamed of that as I have kept myself safe from every other possible scam attack.

It's okay to feel ashamed for encountering such a costly mistake at the brief period it happened, but you don't have to beat yourself up about it for long and being ashamed till now. Every human is prone to mistake and we have at different times in life made our different mistakes of different degrees but we just don't have to live with it.  So mate let the shame go away mistake is part of life and no one is above it, we can only try not to repeat it and am sure you're doing that.

.
3. Greedy scammed. Those who were promised crazy returns without doing anything. (Bitconnect for example or Madoff in TradFi))
6. The betrayed scammed. Whether a beginner or an expert, the betrayed scammed has trusted someone (friend, colleague, lover...) and lost his or her funds.

Has this happened to you or someone you know ?

I have had a direct experience with number  3 but as for number 6 it was a friend that fell for that in his early stage in cryptocurrency.

I got involved with some virtual mining stuff like that, where i had to pay money to purchase a crypto mining machine in the platform which will be mining coins for me every day and eligible to withdraw the coins to my wallet at each end of the month. It was a funny experience actually as I had to always checking the platform first thing eaxh morning I wake up to see how my investment was going. Long story short, I woke up one morning after two weeks of investing into it only to get a massage that the site is doing an upgrade and we should wait for update very soon, for over more than 3 years now am still waiting for the damn update about the site upgrade. Lol.
That was how I lost my money to that virtual mining scam.

As for the number 6, it happened to a friend who trusted another friend of his to buy him bitcoin into his wallet, just for his friend to
 buy below the amount he gave him money for and sent to his wallet, at that time this my very friend don't know how to calculate bitcoin or convert it to usdt because he was just trying to learn about crypto from the very person that was scamming him. It was after some months he got to know he was shortchanged in the amount of bitcoin his so-called friend sent to his wallet.
 How awful.

[Alpha Marine]

9. The clipboard virus scammed. In that case LoyceV explained that (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190776.0) :

How it works
1. You select a Bitcoin address, and press CTRL-C.
2. The malware changes the address to an address owned by the hacker/scammer.
3. You press CTRL-V and lose any funds you send.
Even if you check part of the pasted Bitcoin address, chances are the first few characters are the same, and you still won't notice the address was changed.

Ever since I read that LoyceV thread, I've been very careful about the address when sending BTC. To be honest I didn't care about that before because I didn't know a scam like that existed. I just copy and paste and send the Bitcoin to the wallet, but now I take my time to check through the address if it's the same.

Recently I wanted to send BTC to a friend. We've already discussed previously and he said he was going to need some Bitcoin from me that he'll pay back later. I agreed and asked him to let me know when he needed it.
So this week I received a WhatsApp message from him. The message was his Bitcoin address, with a second message "Let me know when you've sent it". Since we've already discussed it I wanted to transfer the coin immediately but I stopped and decided to call him and confirm. I may be chatting with someone else, maybe someone who stole his phone or whatever. So I called him and asked if I should send it and confirmed that it was him before I sent it.

I know it doesn't mean much but the single fact that I now take my security very seriously since joining this forum is a big WIN.

[Roseline492]

Of course, there are many forms of scams, and scammed people have different profiles. At first I thought people who were scammed were too naive or too greedy, but in reality scams are diverse. Perhaps we could list the different forms of scam and, if need be, tell our own story to help others protect themselves. Don't forget to report scammers in the dedicated topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0). Don't hesitate to tell me or correct me if I've made a mistake in my list.

1. There are the naive scammed, who haven't read enough about how to protect themselves and will simply give their private keys to a stranger who claims to help them.

2. There are the CEX scammed. MtGox, FTX etc ..., they can be beginners or experts.

3. Greedy scammed. Those who were promised crazy returns without doing anything. (Bitconnect for example or Madoff in TradFi))

4. Romantic scammed. A "nice" meeting on the Internet, some nice promises, and the romantic scammed are relieved of their funds.

5. The tired scammed, drunk, drugged or simply distracted by the kids doing bullshit next to him/her. A bit out of his depth, he won't realize that he's on a phising site for example.

6. The betrayed scammed. Whether a beginner or an expert, the betrayed scammed has trusted someone (friend, colleague, lover...) and lost his or her funds.

7. The shitcoin scammed. He/she bought lots of shitcoins on an obscure Pump and Dump group.

8. the sim-swap scammed (https://www.businessinsider.com/credit-card-phone-theft-sim-swap-identity-theft-investigation-2023-4?r=US&IR=T). Beginner or expert, the victim is deprived of all access from one minute to the next. The ease of the hack seems to depend on the country.

9. The clipboard virus scammed. In that case LoyceV explained that (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5190776.0) :

How it works
1. You select a Bitcoin address, and press CTRL-C.
2. The malware changes the address to an address owned by the hacker/scammer.
3. You press CTRL-V and lose any funds you send.
Even if you check part of the pasted Bitcoin address, chances are the first few characters are the same, and you still won't notice the address was changed.

10. The social media scammed. A friend has his twitter account hacked and asks all the victim's contacts for money. Or a VIP has his account hacked and promises a giveaway (it's like you send me an ETH and I'll send you 2 back, it sounds crazy but some people believe it).

11. The scam application scammed. (it's getting a little weird my inventions of words  ). Victims, attracted by the fear of having to pay a fine or attracted by a supposed gift, will scan a QR-code or click on a fraudulent link (classic phishing). Then, if the victim downloads a fraudulent application and validates the authorizations, then the scammer will take control of the smartphone and possession of the wallets and bank accounts. => https://upgradedtamilan.com/an-ordinary-cup-of-tea-cost-a-woman-from-singapore-1-5-million-rubles/

Am I forgetting any?

Has this happened to you or someone you know ?

Just like they said knowledge is very important, is very bad venturing into something one knows nothing about, I was scam through telegram signal group, I was added by someone I don't no, and that group I saw many testimonies of people that profited from the signal group, so I was very thrilled to join them, so they brought a signal for us to buy a certain coin and I did, so I watched the trade moving times four of my capital I was very happy so when I tried selling the coin it refuses to sell, I tried every all to no avail so that was how I lost my money.

[Chilwell]

Just like they said knowledge is very important, is very bad venturing into something one knows nothing about, I was scam through telegram signal group, I was added by someone I don't no, and that group I saw many testimonies of people that profited from the signal group, so I was very thrilled to join them, so they brought a signal for us to buy a certain coin and I did, so I watched the trade moving times four of my capital I was very happy so when I tried selling the coin it refuses to sell, I tried every all to no avail so that was how I lost my money.

I was also scammed in this manner, the same in telegram too I so signal and also people giving testimony about their profit. I was shocked the moment I discovered that I was scam, before I got involved completely I was doubting that how is it's possible for someone to get quick money but since is the money I decided to ignore my doubting and focus on it. After this one I was also scam again this particularly involved arbitrage which I know people make money through it, then I got involved too, they said I should send my lite coin which if it get there is will multiple by two which I did and it multiple, then I wanted to send the money out to my exchange and it refused to go, that was how I loss my fund.

[Xal0lex]

Has this happened to you or someone you know ?

The main problems I've gotten in the crypto space have been interacting with exchangers. You never know for sure how a swap will end up, whether it was successful or was a one-way coin shipment. Another unpleasant moment for me was also interactions with smart contracts, which could take extra coins from my wallet, in the form of hidden fees, or empty my wallet after the next approve.