Fraud schemes where attackers pretend to be someone else often involve impersonating known individuals, trusted individuals, exchanges, or services in order to trick users into sending them cryptocurrency or revealing personal information. We previously mentioned this scheme, but now we will tell you in more detail.

Attackers can pose as well-known, influential personalities or trusted cryptocurrency platforms, creating fictitious profiles on social networks or instant messengers (we talked about how to recognize a fraudulent channel in Telegram here). In this way, they interact with potential victims, gradually gaining their trust through convincing and promising arguments or false credentials. Once the victims give in, the scammers extract money or data from them and disappear.

Cryptocurrency users can protect themselves from impersonation scams in the cryptocurrency world by being vigilant, checking the authenticity of messages, avoiding suspicious offers, and using security methods such as two-factor authentication, using strong passwords, verifying the “investment” project, checking crypto addresses and so on.

TYPES OF THIS FRAUD SCHEME

As we mentioned above, attackers are impersonating celebrities, influencers, customer support, or spoofing platforms. We present below some typical types of this scheme:

Fake profiles on social networks

Fraudsters create fake social media accounts that closely resemble the profiles of famous people or cryptocurrency influencers. To give their accounts a more realistic look, they use similar personalities, profile pictures, and bios.

Phishing emails and websites

Fraudsters spoof reputable crypto platforms or services by sending phishing emails or creating fake websites. These emails and websites often contain links that take users to fake websites. The result is phishing and loss of funds. We wrote more about this here.

Scams on Telegram and Discord

Fraudsters create fake channels on Discord or Telegram that mimic legitimate crypto communities. They attract users with promises of unique investment opportunities or giveaways that require, for example, a down payment.

Appeal on behalf of the support team.

Fraudsters pretend to be support staff from well-known crypto exchanges, exchangers or crypto wallets. They interact with users through fake customer support channels that are visually similar to the official ones. Phishing links are also sent in messages, and then you already understand what is happening.

HOW TO RECOGNIZE CRYPTO IMITATORS

To spot crypto imitators, you should be aware of grammatical errors, avoid sentences that are too good, never reveal sensitive personal information, double check the authenticity of domains, and be wary of unverified messages and links. And now in order

Grammar and spelling errors

Impersonators may make grammatical and spelling errors in their posts. Representatives of official organizations and public figures are usually attentive to their texts. Be alert if you notice frequent grammatical and spelling inaccuracies.

Offers too good to be true

Be wary of offers that seem too good to be true. Fraudsters often use enticing promises of “incredible” earnings or “mind-blowing” gifts to lure victims. Investing in cryptocurrencies always involves risk, and there is no guarantee of high returns without associated risk.

Request personal information

Receiving requests for sensitive data, passwords or SEED phrases is a serious red flag. Legitimate companies usually do not request such information through email or personal messages. If you receive such requests, be extremely careful.

Check domain

When working with websites and email, pay attention to the domain name. Fraudsters often create similar URLs, but with errors. Carefully compare the domain with the original one, but through other channels, enter the dubious domain into a search engine. If there are differences, they are probably scammers.

Pressure

Scammers usually push you roughly into action or rush you, trying to get you to act quickly and without thinking. Real services and companies respect your decision and do not pressure you. If you receive messages that encourage hasty action, take a step back and evaluate the situation. Perhaps they want to deceive you.

CONCLUSION

To avoid such crypto fraud schemes, you should be extremely careful and careful. No one should be your undisputed authority on investing your funds. Especially if you see Elon Musk advertising crypto earnings on a stream with a couple of thousand online and know about modern deep fake technologies.

Simple steps and a little of your time will save your money and nerves! What to do if you do become a victim of crypto fraud (we hope not) read here.

Well, we remind you that the crypto address of both a celebrity and a scammer can be checked with our solution Btrace — free AML check for each new user.