There’s poetic justice to scammers getting beat at their very own sport. A cryptocurrency scammer met their match when attempting to trick Bitcoiner Felix Crisan into sending them Tether (USDT).
The scammer tried to impersonate John Carvalho, the CEO of Synonym, a Bitcoiner Cointelegraph recurrently cites. The scammer, who we’ll name “Pretend John” any more, needed Crisan to ship USDT, however Crisan, who’s been studying and getting concerned with Bitcoin (BTC) for nearly a decade, had different concepts.
Immediately I’ve satisfied a scammer to put in a Lightning Community pockets. BTW @BitcoinErrorLog there’s somebody impersonating you on Telegram pic.twitter.com/Qd0I9pAney
— felix crisan (@fixone) March 23, 2022
In short, Crisan, chief expertise officer of Netopia Funds, satisfied the scammer to put in a Lightning Community (LN) pockets, as he solely offers with “LN belongings.” So, Pretend John installed a Bitcoin LN pockets, Blue Pockets. Nonetheless, as a substitute of sending Pretend John the cash, Crisan despatched a message saying “Eat shit you fucking scammer!”
Justice was duly served — all whereas offering a free lesson in how one can use Bitcoin LN.
However, it does increase questions as as to if Pretend John will proceed scamming individuals however now with Bitcoin LN addresses at their disposal.
The Bitcoin Lightning Community is a fast-growing near-instant layer-2 fee community constructed on high of the Bitcoin base chain. It’s introduced improvements similar to a fast approach to pour a pint, whereas the aforementioned (actual) John Carvalho is constructing his firm on Lightning in partnership with Tether.
Crisan advised Cointelegraph that he “continuously get DMs shilling one funding scheme or one other.” Prudence and precaution are key when interacting and transacting on-line: Scammers, bots and cryptocurrency shills are commonplace on social media platforms, similar to Twitter, whereas malware bots can typically intervene with pockets addresses to steal Bitcoin.
By way of pursuing and possibly catching the miscreant, Crisan stated that “if the scammer opened a channel with this node, then it could be potential. However there are additionally companies that provide type of on-demand channel creation, in order that’s not a really dependable methodology.” Nonetheless, in the end, “solely the node operator would be capable of do that enhanced tracing.”
It’s not Crisan’s first time taking part in methods on scammers. In 2019, he outsmarted a Bitcoin illiterate scammer into sending 21 million (and one) Bitcoin to their deal with. Bitcoin has a tough cap of 21 million Bitcoin, so the scammer clearly must do some homework.
1/ I spent a while as we speak trolling a scammer. At one level I used to be “prepared” to ship him 21mil BTC to “commerce”. He was being thoughtful, although, solely wanting 100k pic.twitter.com/4sxgf0d4DI
— felix crisan (@fixone) July 7, 2019
The above Tweet thread makes clear that some scammers are misinformed at finest, whereas Bitcoin wants extra individuals like Crisan.
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Requested whether or not Crisan had any recommendation to share with cryptocurrency and web customers confronted with a seemingly fixed risk of scams, Crisan advised Cointelegraph:
“Avoiding scams ought to at all times stem from a typical historical past with the requestor — i.e., to find out if they’re who they declare they’re — to ask for a typical reference. (Yesterday, the sort of query was the primary I requested this scammer, and the response nearly confirmed that he’s not John.)”
