What a scam post looks like

bitbrain (63)in #cryptocurrency • 8 years ago

I have never seen anything like the crypto market. Nowhere else will you find so many scammers, liars, cheats, thieves, con artists and dishonest opportunists.

I have possibly neglected the newer crypto investors lately. I guess this is not surprising with the market rather dead and few new crypto investors joining the market lately. While this has never been a "beginners channel", I like to do the odd simpler post for those who are getting to know crypto. As crypto fans, it is important that we help those starting out and give them good advice. There is so much bad advice out there, very daunting to the new investor or trader who does not know the many pitfalls of crypto yet!

So today's post is a simple one. I am going to show you a few posts that I did not approve on Facebook today (I moderate/administrate a few crypto groups there). I just want to show a few typical examples of what a dodgy crypto post looks like, for the benefit of those who may not know.

What a scam post looks like

Note the very poor grammar and an unfortunate "Mrs" called "Darrel" (not impossible, but very rare for a modern English speaking lady. The surname is also obscure. Halfway through the post "she" suddenly becomes a "he". Even the punctuation is very poor.

The good old "scammers" warning - always used by scammers and another favourite: a screenshot of the wonderful "returns" they have made. Random capitalisation and punctuation.

Another gender bender: a "young fellow" named "Larissa", along with a female picture (pictures are normally stolen elsewhere). Shockingly poor grammar and punctuation and the promise of massive returns. The link to someone else's profile is also a typical trick of scammers.

Binary Options = immediate big red flag. Profile pic of a "corporate looking guy/lady" is another typical ploy. Once again the link to another profile.

Here James shares the profile of Dale with us. The red lights on this one would make Rudolph's Red Nose proud! Let's start with shocking grammar and lack of capitalisation (pretty standard as we have seen with scammers - they can't spell properly yet they claim that they can manage your money...). Then we move on to the massive returns, quickly followed up by the dreaded "binary options". Those are the major issues, but I'm not quite done with our poster "James" yet...

Let's take a closer look at "James" himself. Oops. "James" is a female. While this is not technically impossible, chances of you ever seeing or hearing of a female legitimately named "James" are around 0%. Note how James was born and lives in Colorado, yet works in Australia. That is one Hell of a daily commute! I'm pretty sure that it would also require time travel to get to work and back every day. "James" also only joined Facebook in October 2017 - highly unlikely for an adult.

That's enough about "James". Apart from James, I have only given examples of scam posts here, not the posters themselves. Perhaps I shall do that another time. Would anyone be interested in seeing that (fake profile analysis)? Let me know in the comments.

Spotting tips

I see so many every day that I can now spot a scam or scammer on the fly (within a second) with an accuracy in excess of 99%. This lot here are all definitely bad news, I would never post these pics if I was not sure. But if you don't work with these things every day, there are several red flags to look out for in such posts:

Bitcoin futures, Binary Options or Forex. If you see those words, then run. All of them are legitimate ways to make money, but none of the adverts featuring them in crypto groups are ever legit!

Anything based on multi level marketing (i.e. a pyramid scheme). BitConnect may be gone but there are still MANY out there. Their supporters believe in them just as firmly as the BitConnect sheep believed in their scamcoin. Avoid at all costs, their collapse is always just a matter of time.

Anything with a promised return.

Anything that sounds too good to be true.

Any post that refers you to another profile.

Posts with poor English grammar, punctuation and/or spelling.

A post that starts off by warning you about scammers.

A post that states it is "legit" (not always, but normally).

Anything Nigerian (of course there are honest Nigerians, but the vast majority of Nigerian posts are scams - rather safe than sorry).

It is quite possible that many of these scam posts (I easily see 10 new ones every day, more often 20, sometimes more) are part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit crypto and/or to lead investors astray. But it could also be just regular scammers, or perhaps a mixture of the two.

All screenshots from Facebook - a site that I have reported countless scammers to. Yet apparently (when they bother to reply), none of them ever "violate our community standards", despite clearly violating their stated community standards! Very poor show Facebook, you completely fail to protect you users, choosing instead to filter out other random rubbish that offends the delicate sensibilities of easily offended Millennials. 😡

Always watch your back in crypto, you can never be too careful! Not all scams are this obvious!

Yours in crypto,
Bit Brain