That Time When Crypto-Scammers Almost Got Me!

My Close Encounter with a Crypto Scam: A Cautionary Tale

Scammers reading this will experience mixed emotions of excitement and disappointment.

“Aw, we almost got him! So close…”

That’s the most likely reaction if they ever read this article.

Indeed they got close to scamming me since I was just a click away from sending thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency to scammers. Yes, this wasn’t a small amount, but a huge mistake that would have cost me most of my crypto investment in 2017.

I was fortunate enough to avoid being scammed, but it was not because of any proactive measures I took. It was just pure luck.

Of course, I’m not documenting my experiences to support scammers but I’m trying to explain the dangers for the part of my audience who are beginners in cryptocurrency and trying to make sense of how things work. The target audience is crypto-newcomers who either are here to invest in cryptocurrency or work for crypto and earn money online, or even just study the industry and the technology.

Furthermore, more advanced crypto enthusiasts can find the information here engaging and entertaining!

I’ll be mindful not to provide any clues to scammers or enter into details regarding their mistakes, as we don’t want them to improve.

So, scammers, by reading this story, you will not get better at scamming! You can just read it for the entertainment aspect, and learn how I got lucky while I was a beginner in cryptocurrency.

Only with more knowledge we will reduce the menace scammers pose from the CryptoVerse.

Subscribe (for free) to get email notifications whenever I publish:

The Events

I found it on YouTube. It couldn’t be anything else but a fake Ripple airdrop!

Yes, these scams have been running for years with the same format.

Back then, the scammers were advertising this fake giveaway scheme as an airdrop.

I had researched Ripple earlier in 2017 and read somewhere about a plan for a vast airdrop of all the XRP Ripple was still holding.

About 50 Billion XRP were supposed to be airdropped, but the Ripple board had to delay that decision after the exit of Jed McCaleb from the team.

As a beginner with no experience or knowledge of how scams worked in Crypto, I was convinced this was the real deal. I never knew scammers were hacking top YouTube channels and defacing them to look like legit businesses or official cryptocurrency channels. Never seen anything like that before 2017, and I couldn’t assume YouTube’s security was just an automated algorithm that these scammers had figured out how to bypass.

I don’t remember the exact details, but I know that I visited a website from links this YouTube channel was advertising. The pattern is no different today with the fake giveaways.

The scam website was supposedly going to send us back double the coins after we first made the first deposit.

The website contained an address to deposit the XRP, claiming it was a prerequisite to receive the airdrop.

I logged into the exchange I was using at that time.

I was holding BTC, ETH, and XRP, and I was about to send all my XRP to the scammers’ address. (Later, I felt I was brainwashed and clearly remember I was feeling tired when I discovered the fake airdrop, as I was almost sleeping on my desk while watching YouTube. The worst possible timing to make any financial decision.)

Actually, it was a matter of seconds since all I had to do was send my XRP to the scammers’ address.

I had no doubts whatsoever. I did not consider this website a scam. The prospect of quick profit had clouded my judgment.

At that point, it was fate that intervened and rescued me.

As I was getting ready to transfer my XRP investment to the hands of scammers, my phone rang.

All that was left to do was copy the XRP address and paste it to my exchange, as I was already at the withdrawal page on my exchange.

It was THIS close!

On the phone was a friend of mine. We chatted for about ten minutes, and after that, I felt the urge to step outside and grab something to eat.

I returned home an hour later, and when I sat at my desk again, I was facing the exact same situation in front of the screen on my computer. My exchange was on one tab, and on the other tab, the scammers’ website with the address of the XRP I was about to send one hour ago!

But the circumstances had changed. I was looking at the same website but from a different perspective. I wasn’t lacking clarity now.

I instantly recognized the trap that just one hour ago I was about to fall into.

In retrospect, it seemed as though I was hypnotized by the fake promises of doubling up my crypto wealth in just minutes. I felt ashamed that I didn’t catch onto the scam right away.

However, this is how everyone feels in these situations. Most people when they realize they lost their money and can’t do anything about it, will fall in despair and feel shame about these events. It is not entirely their fault, and trust me, even people with vast experience in crypto or the internet have fallen victim to scams.

When we seek to get rich quickly, we get lured by fake promises easily.

This scam, simplistic and naive perhaps, was still constructed this way to attract beginners. The thought process behind this was that newcomers may have come across details suggesting Ripple’s intentions of conducting an airdrop or learned about other cryptocurrencies performing random airdrops to stakeholders.

Despite being a thoughtless scheme, it is unfortunately successful for these crypto con artists on every occasion.

See, for example, the millions of dollars collected by the scammers in the great 2020 Twitter hack. They hacked all these high-profile Twitter accounts and promoted a fake BTC giveaway. When we have seen it all before, it looks like a ridiculous scam, but this is not the same for someone who never knew Twitter accounts could get hacked and never met a similar fake giveaway scheme.

So, this was the story.

In the end, it was luck that saved me.

It is Never the Victim’s Fault

The blame is 100% on the scammers.

Anyone entering the crypto world is doing this for the money. And everyone has read many stories of getting rich quickly. Although this is something we later learn is not simple or feasible.

Still, insulting the victims is an act of arrogance.

Encouraging people to take necessary measures to safeguard themselves online is different from ridiculing and blaming them.

The most effective approach is to emphasize the significance of understanding potential hazards everyone will undoubtedly encounter.

In Conclusion

Six years later, the giveaway scams on YouTube are still rampant. Scammers manage to gain access to accounts by sending malware through email and stealing the Google credentials of top YouTubers.

I’ve always been an open book about my experiences in crypto and have been trying to help by writing easy-to-comprehend stories, and warn people about scams and unstable financial foundations whenever I notice them.

Sharing my journey in cryptocurrency has lately been important to me. Through my writing, I aim to deliver transparent and understandable stories that can guide others in this complicated domain.

Similarly, I try to alert people of any potential scams or unstable financial situations that I come across. Hopefully, by sharing these experiences people will have a thorough and clear understanding of the industry and its dangers.

Cover Picture on Pixabay by SuttleMedia

Also Read:

Platforms:

● read.cash ● noise.app ● Cashrain ● X.com ● Medium ● YouTube

Originally published at https://read.cash. (rewritten for Medium)

Don’t forget to Subscribe and Like if you enjoyed this article!