scammers getting better and better

[mocacinno]

I just wanted to share a quick heads up, a real story that happened to me last/this week. I hope my story can prevent people from getting scammed... Maybe if something similar is happening to you, you can remember this thread and act accordingly.

What happened:
Last week, friday late afternoon, i got a call from a phone number my phone recognized as an official police line. The person on the other end identified himself with a normal sounding name, that is perfectly normal in my region. He identified himself as an inspector from an existing police zone, corresponding to the telephone number that was shown on my screen. The person spoke polite, perfect Dutch, no red flags whatsoever.

The first 10 minutes of the talk, he gave me a geniune looking case number, he informed me that a copy of my identity card was found in posession of a gang of scammers. He started talking to me about everything they could have done with the copy of my papers, and gave genuine tips on what to do to minimise the damage, and to prevent further damage in the future.

At this point, no red flags were raised on my side... Police telephone number, perfectly happy to give his name, police zone, case number, perfect Dutch, not asking for anything suspicious at all.
Only after ~10 minutes, he prudently mentioned crypto currencies... Since no red flags were raised on my end, i told him i did have some crypto on a hardware wallet. The "police officer" told me they worked together with a specialised company that could verify if my identity was used in the crypto community. I had expected to have some time to verify the "police officer"'s story, and went on with what i was doing, expecting to be able to verify some stuff later that evening.

About 30 minutes later, before i had come around to getting anything verified at all, i got a call from a guy from a thirth party company that gave the exact same case number the "police officer" had given me and he informed me my kyc documents were used to open accounts on several exchanges (probably to launder stolen crypto), and they were also used in the recovery of some of my accounts on a couple of exchanges. I started to get suspicious... How does a company i had never heared of have the permission to close accounts and stop verification on at least 10 different exchanges??? He also told me he would flag my KYC documents for ~3 years, so they could no longer be used to open accounts on exchanges (i started to get even more suspicious)... But ok, so far he did not ask for seed phrases, keys, transactions, download links, screen takeover,... etc, etc... Big red flags, but still no real attempt as scamming.
After about 45 minutes, he started to move towards my old ledger... I haven't used the device since ledger announced their program "wallet recovery" which proved they had an option to export data from the secure ellement. I use my ledger to store my testnet coins at the moment, since that's about all it is good for (in my opinion).
Now was the first blinking, bold, underlined, red warning flag: the guy talking to me said my KYC documents were used to recover my key from the three partners in the ledger wallet recovery program (eventough i never, ever used this program). He also started to spew gibberish about a scammer not being able to use my private key to create transactions since (in his words) you'd need the device id and pin code in order to spend any funds... Tough luck for me: the device id was leaked in a big hack last year, so only the pin code would protect me from being robbed... Time was of the essence!!! I felt a bit queezy since i suddenly was confronted with the actual absolute proof that for the last hour, i had been talking to a scammer. Since i had not verified anything, i told him i did not have access to any hardware wallet (wich is true, my wallet is locked in a metal drawer at work, i find this safest, since my work building is guarded 24/7, and the drawer is inconspicious, metal and very sturdy). I told the scammer i could only access the device on wednesday, that way i had some time putting my ducks in a row...

In the meantime, i called the police zone the initial "police officer" claimed to be a member off: they had never heared about him, but they seemed to busy to actually do some digging. Afterwards, i called my own police zone, they dug some further: the police offer does not exist, the case number is real but belongs to a completely different case AND the real procedure the police follows is to send the case to the victim's police zone. The local police zone then invites the victim to their actual building where you are talked to by a police officer in uniform (and in person). They told me that phone calls are only used to very briefly scetch a situation and make an appointment for a face to face talk in the actual police office. They also told me they'd never work with a thirth party that contacts victims directly... Everything has to go trough the local police office.

Yesterday, the "officer" called again, but i didn't yet have a response ready, so i told him to call me again today... Today i have to be very short and direct, making sure he understands he cannot scam me, getting the target off my back without telling him what gave him away (so he doesn't learn what he can do better next time)... I really don't like to make such calls, but hey, it's the only option.

Now, i wasn't scammed, but i just wanted to share my story as a warning: these guys are getting good... The days where you could conclusively tell you're talking to a scammer within the first 10 seconds of a talk seem to be over... Now they're using spoofed phone numbers, local people, existing case numbers,... I dread the future if these guys get even better than they are right now

[Upgrade00]

Did the scammer offer any other of your personal information? It will help to know how much data they were able to get on you besides your phone number and what could be the source of that breach.

Good you're sharing your experience, scammers are usually not meticulous, hurrying over things gives them away lots of times. If they take their time like this more people will fall victim and drop their guard as they believe they're on to law enforcement. I'm also curious to know how they got a real case number to use here.

[mocacinno]

Did the scammer offer any other of your personal information? It will help to know how much data they were able to get on you besides your phone number and what could be the source of that breach.

Good you're sharing your experience, scammers are usually not meticulous, hurrying over things gives them away lots of times. If they take their time like this more people will fall victim and drop their guard as they believe they're on to law enforcement. I'm also curious to know how they got a real case number to use here.

They had my full name, telephone number and e-mail. I didn't offer them any personal information, so i truly believe that if they had my full address, they probably would have used it. Truth be told: if the initial (fake) police officer would have asked my full address during the first 10 minutes of the call (before any red flags were raised), odds are i would have given him more personal information if he'd asked...

Since they were clearly on the prowl for crypto users, i can only suspect they must have bought a leaked database from a crypto related service. Since they took a lot of time and effort to setup and (try to) execute this scam, i cannot believe it was simply cold calling, they must have bought a list that at least made sure every potential victim was "worth" pursuing.
Since they clearly had a preference for ledger, i must assume it was the ledger database hack, but i cannot be 100% sure (especially since this hack would probably have divulged my full address, and they never used this piece of information, so i assume they don't have it).

As for the case number: my local police assumes they either bought it, or collected it from the trash somewhere... It was a real number, i don't want to share it online as not to help future scammers, but i can only say it's not an "ordinary" format, it's quite complex and very distinctive. A normal "random" number doesn't even come close to a real case number (or so i learned)

[NotATether]

We are also getting better. It's only improving because of AI.

Just a few days ago, there was a guy who recruited a crew of red teamers to find vulnerabilities. They spent thousands and thousands of $$$ in tokens per day (gracefully covered by Opensats), scanned hundreds of bitcoin repos and found vulnerabilities in so many of them, most of which were eliminated.

Anyone who is well known inside the community has the power to do immense good with this thing, and mitigate the effects of scammers. It's not all doom and gloom.

I will admit that I am an optimist here. That is easy to do when you release and maintain Bitcoin tooling. You do too, so you should know the feeling.

Bitcoin developers are currently locked in a battle with AI-powered script kiddies who are trying to inflict immense harm on the community. The only way we will win is if we use immense AI power to uncover their schemes and freeze them out.

[Spaceman1000$]

Your story is quite understandable and well detailed in terms of explanation, even though the text are Iong I still took out time to read line by line. In all the narration there is something I suspect that you did not explain, how did those scammers know that you are somebody that is into crypto or possibly has crypto assets, because they cannot just call a random person and start asking the questions they asked to know about your details and the exchanges and how they will flag your KYC documents, all of these points to me that there is somebody somewhere that has given them a tip about the fact that you might possibly have crypto assets.
Trust me those scammers had an insider, the onus now lies on you to identify who the person is, and for you to be very careful with who you disclosure some certain information about yourself to.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

About 30 minutes later, before i had come around to getting anything verified at all, i got a call from a guy from a thirth party company that gave the exact same case number the "police officer" had given me and he informed me my kyc documents were used to open accounts on several exchanges (probably to launder stolen crypto), and they were also used in the recovery of some of my accounts on a couple of exchanges. I started to get suspicious... How does a company i had never heared of have the permission to close accounts and stop verification on at least 10 different exchanges He also told me he would flag my KYC documents for ~3 years, so they could no longer be used to open accounts on exchanges (i started to get even more suspicious)...

Now was the first blinking, bold, underlined, red warning flag: the guy talking to me said my KYC documents were used to recover my key from the three partners in the ledger wallet recovery program (eventough i never, ever used this program).

I see exchanges and KYC appear several times in your post, and with different phone calls. It's not new but again your story of how scammers know about you, your identity document number, then contact you for scam are related to centralized exchanges and your KYC documents there.

Your story is only another one to make us fearful about centralized exchanges and KYC. How scammers got your KYC documents is unknown but it's never strange to see they got such sensitive documents, not only yours but also many other people's KYC documents.

Events made you scare about custodial wallets, centralized exchanges.
Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless.
A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime.

[knowngunman]

Calling with official police number is a minor issue since most caller ID is not longer useful. Scammers easily passed verification and use official lines, it's a common thing now.

What seems strange to me is the fact that they had genuine case number even though it belonged to a different case. Case numbers are confidential and under police custody. Only relevant parties have access to them. How they were able to obtained the genuine case number is questionable and the police have questions to answer too.

Hardly for people to fall for this type of scam except they're too naive or they don't have clean hands.

[mocacinno]

Your story is quite understandable and well detailed in terms of explanation, even though the text are Iong I still took out time to read line by line. In all the narration there is something I suspect that you did not explain, how did those scammers know that you are somebody that is into crypto or possibly has crypto assets, because they cannot just call a random person and start asking the questions they asked to know about your details and the exchange and how they will flag your KYC documents, all of these points to me that there is somebody somewhere that has given them a tip about the fact that you might possibly have crypto assets.
Trust me those scammers had an insider, the onus now lies on you to identify who the person is, and for you to be very careful with who you disclosure some certain information about yourself to.

Probably a data leak. Potentially the ledger database leak from 2020 (since they were mostly interested in my ledger hardware wallet)

Calling with official police number is a minor issue since most caller ID is not longer useful. Scammers easily passed verification and use official lines, it's a common thing now.

What seems strange to me is the fact that they had genuine case number even though it belonged to a different case. Case numbers are confidential and under police custody. Only relevant parties have access to them. How they were able to obtained the genuine case number is questionable and the police have questions to answer too.

Hardly for people to fall for this type of scam except they're too naive or they don't have clean hands.

apparently, there are ways to get official case numbers, it seems they are also sold online... I found this one strange aswell.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Probably a data leak. Potentially the ledger database leak from 2020 (since they were mostly interested in my ledger hardware wallet)

Likely so, because Ledger hardware wallet company has this massive and severe data leak in 2020.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/Breach/Ledger

What Happened

In June 2020, the hardware crypto wallet manufacturer Ledger suffered a data breach that exposed over 1 million email addresses. The data was initially sold before being dumped publicly in December 2020 and included names, physical addresses and phone numbers. The data was provided to HIBP by Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock.

Compromised Data
Email addresses
Names
Phone numbers
Physical addresses

[Majestic-milf]

 I would have fallen for it, I'd have to admit.(Just kidding). Still, the guy must have taken time to study how such things work and aho knows how long he must have observed the case for it to look believable. This is crazy! Imagine if you hadn't known where to draw the line or done your own investigation, you would have been a victim. It's disturbing how scammers won't think twice using another's identity to rip innocent people of their funds. Thanks for sharing this.

[mocacinno]

I would have fallen for it, I'd have to admit.(Just kidding). Still, the guy must have taken time to study how such things work and aho knows how long he must have observed the case for it to look believable. This is crazy! Imagine if you hadn't known where to draw the line or done your own investigation, you would have been a victim. It's disturbing how scammers won't think twice using another's identity to rip innocent people of their funds. Thanks for sharing this.

No problem, happy to share, i just hope that by sharing i can prevent others from falling for such scams.

The scammer will call me back in about an hour, not looking foreward to the conversation, but i've prepared a little text that should basically make it very clear to him that i will not cooperate with his scam and not to contact me again.

I just hate the kind of people that have so little morals they are able to act completely normal, happy and professional whilst trying to steal somebody's lifesavings... I just wonder what kind of people do this...

[Mitchell]

I would ask you to post this in [General] Crypto scams, attacks and malware, which is meant as a general place for news, stories, etc. That way this story will always be easy to find/read.

It does suck how good they've gotten (and the amount of data being leaked is insane). Recently I've had my secondary phone number spoofed, so people suddenly started calling me back with questions. Since you mention Dutch, you could leave a warning on websites like: https://www.wieheeftgebeld.nl/ and https://wieheeftmijgebeld.nl/ if you don't want to share the phone number here.

[Rockstarguy]

This is another lesson to learn: never trust a phone call, no matter how convincing it may be. It is better to think of a way to verify every call, either by visiting the institution or organization or by any reliable method of verification. This is why knowledge is key, and had it been you don’t understand how cases like this are handled by the police, it is possible for the story to be convincing enough for you to fall victim, since the call looks very genuine.

Knowledge is very important. No matter how scammers look so real and convincing, there will always be a red flag that can help one avoid falling victim to their scam. Scammers are always good at appearing too real just to manipulate and take advantage of people, which highlights the importance of having scam awareness and understanding how things work.

[tech30338]

I recieved a lot of calls before but i just waste their time and trying to make them believe I'm going to fall for it, when time they are asking personal information i refuse to give it to them, they even send an email with a link asking me to click it, this was like 2019 and some like 2023, but every time someone calls i let them say my information, and i wont confirm anything, because that might lead them into something so even my bank asking me or may telco i wont confirm anything, because one wrong information that is given to them they might use it against you or help them access to what i have email bank etc.,

[mocacinno]

I would ask you to post this in [General] Crypto scams, attacks and malware, which is meant as a general place for news, stories, etc. That way this story will always be easy to find/read.

It does suck how good they've gotten (and the amount of data being leaked is insane). Recently I've had my secondary phone number spoofed, so people suddenly started calling me back with questions. Since you mention Dutch, you could leave a warning on websites like: https://www.wieheeftgebeld.nl/ and https://wieheeftmijgebeld.nl/ if you don't want to share the phone number here.

Done, made a quote, so people can read the story, will lock this thread now, so people can contribute in your main thread. Sorry for the confusion

The problem with sharing the phone number is that it was spoofed. The call seemed to originate from the actual police office. I verified the number online, and it was the exact number shown on the police office's contact page. But when i phoned them directly, they had never heared from the fake name given by the scammer... Another very important lesson: never trust phone numbers, they can easily be spoofed. Don't think it won't happen to you, i don't have a big IRL profile, only a handfull of people know i hold crypto... But still... They went all out...

Further discussion in The main thread (see link Mitchell)

[Mitchell]

Done, made a quote, so people can read the story, will lock this thread now, so people can contribute in your main thread. Sorry for the confusion

No worries. It is a pretty new one and general threads haven't been really talked about lately, so all good.