You’ve seen it before: A site that promises instant returns on your small crypto investment.
It looks legitimate with all the happy customer testimonials, FOMO-inducing promises and easy-to-use dashboards that look like so many other financial sites.The language is open, breezy but sometimes, well, odd.
One site, Coindeskminers.com especially piqued our interest because it used a derivative of our brand without our knowledge, much less consent.
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“They say money doesn’t grow from the ground, well it does with crypto currencies [sic] because at Coindesk Miners we have assembled a group of world-class engineering, strategic cryptocurrency mining and investment logic growing investments and making profits for both parties,” the website says.The promise is simple: You submit a little cryptocurrency, as little as $5, and you’ll get instant returns.And it implies a nonexistent connection to CoinDesk, the world’s premiere crypto news site.
Too bad it’s all a scam.
And, sadly, not everyone can tell.
In the past few months, CoinDesk has received multiple messages from users – including some retirees – who have dumped thousands of dollars worth of crypto into these sites.Further, Reddit is full of examples of savvy users being duped by get-rich-quick schemes.The site we’re exploring today, Coindeskminers.com – we aren’t linking to it but we want you to be aware of the name – is just one of many we’ve seen over the years.
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The trick often runs like an advance fee scam – think the Nigerian prince who wants to give you millions but needs a few thousand dollars to complete the paperwork – with a sad twist.
Because cryptocurrencies cannot be returned (unless the recipient chooses to) and your bank can’t step in to prevent a transaction, the scam begins with you losing your “investment” instantly.
Any money you send to this site is gone.
Then, after the scammers show you the amazing profits you’ve made on your money, they ask for more money to pay for “fees,” essentially forcing you to pay up in the hopes of gaining your cash and fake profits back.
Then the scammers disappear.
Let’s explore the world of scam sites and talk about what you can do to stay safe.
When in doubt, reach out The first step before using any crypto site is to reach out to a knowledgable third party.This could include posting on a Reddit cryptocurrency forum (where you’ll be yelled at ) or asking a computer-savvy friend about the site.Further, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out anyone at CoinDesk regarding crypto and crypto scams.
See also: How to Contact CoinDesk’s Editors and Reporters (the Right Way)
In this case, a reader notified us about Coindeskminers in a quick email to our [email protected] email address.This is always a good first step.
The reader, who preferred to remain Quote: :
“I was contacted on Telegram by some individual asking … about my bitcoin ‘investments’ who then went on to shill CoinDeskMiners.The link [they sent] goes to the site being shilled.
It has a CoinDesk logo, and the CoinDesk service mark.I presume this is a scam, but if I were a noob I certainly might think this was [a] solicitation of investment by CoinDesk, and because of CoinDesk’s well-known brand, I might consider actually investing (if I were that gullible.)”
Coindeskminers was familiar to us.
We noticed this scam back in December 2019 and warned our readers in a tweet.Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough.
We began checking things out.The first step? A visit to the site itself.This brings up a professional-looking page complete with screenshots, logos, testimonials and login system.And a bastardization of our logo.
We performed a bit of analysis using a tool called a WhoIs lookup and discovered the owners registered the domain name anonymously but originated in Nigeria, a place unfortunately known as a scammer hotbed .That said, we’ve seen scammers pop up all over the world and, thanks to the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, physical location no longer matters.
Further analysis of the host turned up very little.Because servers can be anywhere in the world, this one appeared to be in California and the use of Cloudflare – a service that ensures website accessibility – further clouded the user’s location.In short, a dead end..