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Brecht Ryckaert

Batteries not included.

I spent a couple of days chasing Crypto giveaway scams

If you’re into crypto like me and you’re on Twitter, chances are pretty good the Twitter algorythm has put some crypto giveaways in your timeline.

While some of these tweets are absolutely legitimate, a bunch of them are just scammers that are out to get your crypto coins. Usually such a tweet will indicate they’ll be giving away x-amount of a certain type of crypto, if you:

  • Follow their account
  • Retweet the tweet
  • Like the tweet

And all of the sudden, this slides into your DM’s:

There are 2 major red flags in the DM I got on Twitter:

  • Asking me to randomly add someone on Telegram while they could just ask my ETH wallet addres via Twitter DM. Jumping platforms is a typical scammer tactic.
  • The account messaging me was not the real account from whom I retweeted. This account was set up to make it look like Troop | NFT Promotor was messaging me. Another classic scammer tactic.

But for the fun of it, I’ve messaged that very imposter on Telegram. Because why not, right?

At first they’ll ask you your ETH wallet address, which I obviously provided.

So far so good, right? And of course, now the scammer will provide a screenshot making it look like they’re ready to send you the crypto:

And of course I played along. Not long after, the scammer starts to make conversation:

Here’s another red flag. The scammer is basically checking what they’ll be able to steal from you. And of course I’m 300% sure I’m dealing with a scammer now. But I also wanted to see how they would try and steal my crypto. So I kept playing along. Since the wallet is limited, I tried pulling an emotional story. In reality, I do have a wallet for my daughter, but I wasn’t going to use it for chasing scammers…

And suddenly, there it was:

The gas fee is always paid by the person that is sending the crypto and deducted from the amount that was sent. The scammer would make me pay for the gas fee in order to “receive my crypto”.

Well played sir indeed.

Be careful for this type of scam.

Found this useful ? Want to add some ETH to my wallet? Here’s the wallet address.

0x52aCa3bA4D51145b486bD5Fdaf752Ac254A96B89