Welcome to Money Beng, today I will tell you a story about cryptocurrencies, scams and scams that hide on the web.
Nowadays the internet gives us so many possibilities to make money online that there are many users willing to make online investments of different types, but more and more scams are around the corner and there is always someone who speculates and takes advantage of the less experienced , this is happening especially in the world of cryptocurrencies, used to steal money.
Here’s what happened to me a few days ago
I made this article just to warn you about the dishonest methods of some web users to steal money through cryptocurrencies.
I had just listed one of my websites for sale on a very popular application for selling websites online.
At one point a user contacts me saying he is interested in buying my website and giving me the Telegram contact for a faster conversation.
I am a web expert and I had already guessed that it was a bot that only served to catch potential scammers.
In fact, on Telegram a human person replies and not a bot that asks normal questions regarding the sale of the site.
But I smelled burnt, because the questions were too well structured and prepared to be sent by a normal user intending to buy my site.
At this point I continue the game with this scammer to understand how far he could push me.
Among his questions was also this: Which hosting provider is your domain registered with?
After agreeing on a purchase price, the guy says he wants proof that I own the website by asking me for a screenshot of the registrar’s control panel.
So here we have the first scam attempt, in fact by providing this screenshot he could have contacted my provider saying he forgot the password and proving its ownership by showing this screenshot.
At this point I tell him that I could not provide it to him and that he send the payment through an escrow account.
The guy therefore expresses discomfort in paying extra commissions to the broker and to the trust account, therefore he asks me if it is possible to pay in cryptocurrencies, also saying that I would receive the money first and only then would I send the site.
I still play his game!
I register on Trust Wallet and on Exmocoin, as per this scammer’s suggestion.
At this point the guy sends me 40,000 dollars in Bitcoin on Exmocoin, and so far it would seem all real, any non-expert person could have believed that they really received 40,000 euros in their Exmocoin account!
Instead, as an expert, I immediately understood that it was a second scam attempt, in fact it is a fictitious cryptocurrency exchange application created very well by its architects!
In fact, to transfer these 40,000 virtual dollars to my bank account, the application told me that I would first have to make a deposit of 0.125 Bitcoins, currently 2,000 dollars, this from the account with which I intended to withdraw the 40,000 dollars!
In this way I would have transferred 2,000 dollars in cryptocurrencies without giving any proof or trace to an application that seems real.
After doing the transfer the guy would be completely gone!
Beware of scams behind cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are tools that allow you to pay and receive money but completely disconnected from the international interbank system, this means that once you put your money into these applications they will disappear into thin air and with them any trace!
This makes it easy for web criminals to scam with cryptocurrencies, because they can never be traced, very often they are thieves from remote areas of the world and it will be impossible for you to get the money sent via cryptocurrencies back.
Beware of EXMOCOIN.COM
Exmocoin.com is a web application used by one of these scammers exploiting the name and reviews of EXMO.COM or EXMO.money, which are the only two reliable pages of this company.
EXMOCOIN.COM is a scam, implemented by very experienced people and capable of stealing your money in many ways.
In fact, when you search the internet for reviews relating to Exmo Coin, those of the real company will appear, but which is actually called EXMO.COM.
So you might not realize that these are actually two completely different things.
The same company EXMO.COM has published an article about it explaining how these fictitious websites try to steal the identity and authority of companies to commit scams on cryptocurrencies.
We invite you to read it at this link!
These are very dangerous people who use every possible weapon to steal your money even by playing on your emotions.
In fact, a person who thinks that this application is real and finding 40,000 euros in the account without being able to withdraw them would prefer to transfer 2,000 dollars and thus be able to withdraw all 42,000 instead of finding himself without his own site, and with money blocked forever.
All studied in detail to commit identity theft, money, digital assets, privacy data. All of which ends up on a black market where cryptocurrencies are exchanged instead of real money, without any traceability.
Luckily I am an expert, and I managed to save myself from all their moves, I have never sent them any sensitive data, let alone a website, and as a web expert it is my duty to make the web a safer place by denouncing these situations and making people aware of how these cryptocurrency scams are carried out.
How to recognize a scam
Recognizing a scam is not very difficult!
When you are contacted by bots, very often the language in which the question is asked is very generic and incorrect spelling is common, for example I understood that it was a bot when there was a dash in the middle of the message, who would put it never next to a word that absolutely does not need it?
When links are sent to you, never open them directly, because viruses could be hidden inside, rather look for the keyword of the domain and see if there are any reviews of these sites on the internet.
Check that the domain exactly matches that of the reviews found on sites like Trustpilot to name one.
Because even if a vowel changes, it wouldn’t be the same site.
When emails are sent containing logos, symbols and images of real companies, check that the images are in high definition and the domain of the sender’s email corresponds to the official website of the company.
For example info@officialsite.com would be trusted against info@officialsite.com if the root domain of the site in question is officialsite.com.
Never use cryptocurrencies as a method to receive or send money if you are not 100% aware of how this world works or you could be scammed without even realizing it.
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Money Beng, Corrado Firera
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