Every day we communicate with a lot of clients. Often clients share positive stories with you; we help them find answers to their questions, wish each other a good day, and go our separate ways. But sometimes, we learn about new fraud schemes, and often in such situations, we can’t help a defrauded user anymore. Still, we have an unshakable desire to share information with other clients – to protect them from fraudsters in the future.
That’s why we wrote this article today. We want to tell you about one of the popular scam schemes that can lure an inexperienced user and leave him without funds.
How do they cheat online users today?
As many know, on the expanses of the Internet, you can often find offers of quick and easy earnings. The naive user is offered to invest his hard-earned money, for example, in some brokerage company.
The company will allegedly play with your money on the stock exchange and increase your income often over a short period. This can also include other activities: you can be asked to invest in a cryptocurrency wallet, cloud mining, pyramid scheme, a fast-growing business and a company that is engaged in bookmaking forecasts and will do for you bets, and so on.
Their essence is always the same, to promise the customer the mountain of gold in a short time, showing imaginary guarantees, which in the eyes of an inexperienced user look natural, and to take from the client a considerable sum as a deposit. Often, these scammers order advertising their services on popular resources to show their importance and fame (all the same because the cost of advertising then returns repeatedly).
The user who takes the bait of cheaters starts a personal account with a virtual cryptocurrency account and watches the growth of balance in his performance daily. In reality, the client does not have access to this wallet. At some point, the user decides to withdraw his funds, happy with the easy earnings. But to start, it is asked to pay income tax – 20-30% of the balance (usually 100-200 thousand rubles). The victim pays the tax to a bitcoin wallet, using exchange services because, as a rule, he does not have his bitcoin wallet.
Naturally, after the fake tax payment, the client receives nothing, and the “broker” communicating with the client simply disappears. The distraught user begins to contact anywhere he can write on forums, telling about what happened. At this point, new fraudsters get in touch with the victim and introduce themselves as a law firm (supposedly has extensive experience in solving such situations), which will help recover the lost funds from the unfair brokerage company. They don’t ask for payment for their services in advance. As a result of cunning manipulations with the victim, pseudo-lawyers again tuck payment of some tax in the 10-20% of the amount. After that, history repeats, the law firm evaporates, and the victim again loses his money. So the user gives his money to swindlers as many as three times: When he pays the amount of the initial deposit, when he delivers the tax and when he appeals to the “lawyers.” Because of that, we want to warn you, friends. We wouldn’t want to, but more often than not, the proverb turns out to be true: Free cheese happens only in a mousetrap, so all offers of “easy money” are better to check thoroughly before you agree. And be vigilant because there is no governmental “tax” on bitcoin wallets, and the desire to earn quick money can deprive you of the funds you already have.
