So there used to be a time when scammers put fourth bare minimum effort in order to attract and catch the less educate, most gullible in our population and while that still exists there is now a new breed of scammer that goes a long way in a conn to such an extent that even the smart educated and well trained people can fall. Admiration is not the right word, but the extent in which the scammer below went through to get some money out of my mother is technically impressive.
Story Time
My mother is in her mid 70’s and as a good son I have always taught her to be careful on the internet and for the most part she is. To put it in perspective she has a different password for every website, something I bet…you reading this probably don’t do.
Anyway, yesterday I got a call from Mom that she wanted to come over to talk about something. When she arrived she told me she needed to borrow some money and she didn’t want to tell me why because it was a surprise. I’m a good son, but I’m not an idiot and so I pressed her and she confessed that a friend had gotten her into a bitcoin investment site and that she had invested some money and was poised for a huge windfall and there was an opportunity to invest a little more and double the pay out.
When I was done screaming at her for being such a fool (no I’m not proud of it)… I was able to get the details and start to unravel what happened and how. A couple of months back she was approached by a friend of hers (a real life , flesh and blood friend) who told her about this opportunity and about how much money she was making and how if she brought her into the investment they’d both get bonuses. (That’s righ the scammers are now using their own victims to recruit other victims complete with referral links)
My mother headed to the site and checked it out:
https://def-crypto-inv.com/ <- didn't make it a link on purpose
Then she used her referal URL
https://app.def-crypto-inv.com/register/OtherPersonName
to create an account. This was the referral URL that was given to her by her friend.
Now once there she was prompted to go into her CashApp and purchase some bitcoin within cash app and send the resulting coin to a wallet address provided in this app. She verified with her friend that this is what she did as well and proceeded to deposit money into her cash app, buy bitcoin (something that cash app makes all too easy) and sent her bitcoin away. (Now this is a bitcoin investment scam and it is hilarious to think that you are buying bitcoin in cash app so you can invest in bitcoin… 
)
Once she made the transfers the deposits showed up in her Deficrypto Exchange Immediately
And within a couple of days her investment of 4900 dollars had “grown” to over 50K
Now technically this thing is pretty impressive it has a few LIVE tickers for bitcoin and other coins that are legit, you can see your total deposit amount as well as your portfolio size and growth over time. You can Trade (buy more), Withdraw (they conveniently ask for bank account info here… you know… so they can deposit your earnings)
And they have a LIVE SUPPORT CHAT where you can talk to an agent. Further more she only deposited 3K but she got her referral bonus which boosted her to 4900
Then they use something called Universal Crypto Signals which are “opportunities” to immediately grow your investment
These “deals” create a sense of urgency by telling you you have a certain number of days to invest into a “Signal” which will give you a crazy (immediate ROI). In this case the only signal that is available to her is one that costs a just a little more than her total account value and once you enable it it says oh, you only get it if you have an ACTIVE TRADE
and ofcourse the minimum investment is just a LITTLE higher than your current holdings
There are a lot more features here that make it easy to get scammed, if you go to just buy crypto they tell you to send payment to this wallet:
bc1qcyxcamfs36s2kcahrmt0tvsgrvxthptsl2dy4h
Or you can pay with a gift card for Sephora… or Apple
Anyway this is an impressive amount of work for a scam. Her friend still doubling down on how many millions she is making (she’s never gotten a payout cause its “growing”) my mom is also having a hard time coming to terms with this scam. She lost 3K (all her savings and it hurts) she swears she is going to get it back any minute and cash out her winnings.
There are plenty of signs and cracks if you are smart enough, their home page is a wordpress site poorly configured and a bunch of the links don’t work… but it is impressive enough that with a little influence from a foolish friend people can fall for it.
I’m filing stuff with the FBI and Crime Bureau etc not that it is going to do any good, but I wanted to share this PSA because the attack didn’t come from a random person on the internet it was a close friend and that makes it so much easier.
