A few quickies on fraud
Purpose of /r/scams
r/scams is a strange place. A typical thread there goes sort of like this:
OP
Hey, guys, I got sent this dm on instagram and I’m not sure what to make of it. A “guru” wants me to buy and send him cryptocurrency for him to “invest” on my behalf. So, is this obvious scam a scam?
Redditor #1
Yes, that is a scam.
Redditor #2
crypto!
Automod
AutoModerator has been summoned to explain fake cryptocurrency site scams. Fake cryptocurrency websites and apps controlled by scammers are becoming more and more common. Sometimes the scam begins with a romance scammer who claims that they can help the victim invest in cryptocurrency. Victims are told to buy cryptocurrency of some kind using a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange, and then they are told to send their cryptocurrency to a website wallet address where it will be invested. Sometimes the scam begins with a notice that the victim won cryptocurrency on some website, in this case messages will often be sent through Discord. In either case, the scammer controls the website, so they make it look like there is money in the victim’s account on their website. Then the scammer (or the scammer pretending to be someone official who is associated with the website) tells the victim that they have to put more money into the website before they can get their money out of the website. Of course all of the money sent by the victim has gone directly into the scammer’s wallet, and any additional money sent by the victim to retrieve their money from the website will also go directly into the scammer’s wallet, and all of the information about money being held by the website was totally fake. This scam is also known as the pig butchering scam: https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/na8oax/asian_guygirl_from_online_dating_mentors_you_to/. If the scammer used Bitcoin, then you can report the scammer’s Bitcoin wallet address here: https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/reports. If the scammer used Ethereum, then you can report the scammer’s Ethereum wallet address here: https://info.etherscan.com/report-address/. You can see how much cryptocurrency has been sent to the scammer’s wallet address here: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer. Thanks to redditor nimble2 for this script.
I spent sooo much time making the “fake forum posts” look right
r/scams is a community for discussing frauds & avoiding being defrauded. This is noble, but I think its purpose has a weird tension in it:
If a poster thinks to ask about something on /r/scams/, the poster probably expects they are dealing with a scam. As they figure it’s a scam, they don’t need /r/scams/’ help.
If a person being defrauded doesn’t think they’re being scammed, then they aren’t going to ask about this on /r/scams/, so /r/scams/ can’t save them.
I think this suggests that the range of situations where /r/scams/ is in a position to prevent a scam are pretty narrow. People definitely get value out of it regardless, of course.
Legitimate use of Noble Lie?
Pig-butchers often try to get their mark to interact with fake cryptocurrency investment platforms. These sites are pretty barebones. They’ll have some price tickers, a deposit button, and a customer support widget, and not much else.
People on /r/scams/ will sometimes give advice to crypto investment scam victims, that makes me raise an eyebrow. The OP will post something like this:
OP
My investment guru told me to download Coinbase and buy Bitcoin, and to then make an account on https://www.0a8c11bc1TradePro.tk, and to then send my Bitcoin from Coinbase to the address 0x10a8c11bc1TradePro. Did I get scammed?
and they’ll get a response like this:
Redditor
Cryptocurrency is always a scam.
This is a strange response!
On one hand, there is a reasonable case for that nobody should buy cryptocurrency. OP certainly shouldn’t. OP will be better off if they categorically steer clear.
On the other hand, the point at which OP got scammed wasn’t when they downloaded Coinbase or even when they bought Bitcoin. They could have traded the Bitcoin for dollars and withdrawn the dollars, likely without issue. They got scammed only when they sent it to 0x10a8c11bc1TradePro.
Sending their coin to 0x10a8c11bc1TradePro is obviously a scam even in comparison to everything else in crypto. This distinction seems important to me. But telling OP about it might embolden them to deposit more and to then gamble it away or lose it trading shitcoins. Is it better if they don’t find out?
Omniscient 419 Scammer?
Scam emails, the sort that gmail automatically & silently junks for you, are written poorly. Here’s a representative excerpt from one:
WITH DUE RESPECT OF THIS HONORABLE COURT UNITED STATE SUPREME COURT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WE WANT TO INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE DISCOVERED A TRANSACTION BETWEEN YOU AND AFRICA UNITS, ACCORDING TO THE INVESTIGATION MADE IT HAS COME TO OUR NOTICE THAT YOU ARE THE REAL BENEFICIARY OF THE SAID FUNDS ONLY THAT YOU WERE DEALING WITH THE WRONG ONES.
Terrible! Many have noticed this and asked why these are written so poorly.
The standard answer is “this is done intentionally, to filter out the skeptical, so the scammer doesn’t have to waste time responding to people who aren’t going to fall for it & won’t send money.”
This sounds reasonable, and it’s the sort of thing that would be really satisfying if it were true, but is it? The authors might just be sort of bad at writing American English.
Youtuber “Atomic Shrimp” gets into extended conversations with email scammers & many of these go pretty “off-script”. The different scammers tend to have a distinct voice & style & so on. And this voice persists across different stages of him “getting them off-script”. Which I think suggests that this is often just how the person writing the scam email, actually writes.
This makes a bit more sense to me than that an email about how “the IRS demands Steam gift cards!” is actually playing 4-d chess.