In the video below, Uncle Scam explains how scammers are using fancy websites and promises of incredible returns to get people into fake cloud mining.
Here are ways Uncle Scam highlights, that can make this scam continue for years..
Set up an attractive website, try to look legit. Show pictures of people with a supposed role, Chief technical officer, Pool Operations, Computer Sciences, Social Media Management…, the more people your fake team has the more you look legit.
Offer a 500+ days ROI service with a contractual clause to stop the service once unprofitable.
During these 500+ days, you can pay back your customers (about 1/500 each day) without difficulty, because the payouts are just a part of what the customers paid for hardware, you don’t need to really mine. Of course, you need to find a way to stop or lower the payouts before reaching ROI.
Offer discounts to people recruiting new customers for you (3% seems enough).
Here is the full video:
That is very similar to what Josh Garza at GAWminers.com did with the Zencloud mining ponzi scheme. He was taking preorders and selling miners (after using them to mine for a month first) from antminers to hashlets. He made millions.
You know it's bad when there is a dedicated subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/joshgarzaisafraud
He is getting busted now http://www.coindesk.com/sec-seeks-10-million-default-judgment-against-gaw-miners/
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It is sad that people fall for these schemes - Hopefully we can create some awareness and save a few people money :-)
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