Anatomy of a scam.
A scam happens when a person takes undue advantage of a situation
to pass on faulty goods, keep monies in a trade when they never
meant to pass on any value for the monies traded (the so called
counterparty risk) and so on. If someone cheats you, you may
be described as having fallen prey to a scam.
In BSCEX, we have a platform offering to bring Binance OnChain
experiences, activities and advantages OffChain. Don't worry if
the nuances of OffChain v OnChain don't make sense just yet. Just
think, it's all about investments and blockchains.
BSC.tools (telegram) appeared alongside the official Telegram Groups (BSCEX) offering to allow users to participate in a private offering involving a sale of new tokens (private sale) for the exchange of some Ethereum (anywhere from 0.2 - 1 ETH were asked of 'investors').
The owner (scammer) asked for monies to be paid to 0x1DA7829BDbc210Fc8Ad64e499e7B5B88089AaECE and used 'Google forms' to pretend to 'onboard new users'.
The owner (scammer) asked for monies to be paid to 0x1DA7829BDbc210Fc8Ad64e499e7B5B88089AaECE and used 'Google forms' to pretend to 'onboard new users'.
As of this writing, he/she was still promising a time/money extension of his/her sham scheme by five ETHs worth.
Every effect was used to dress up the facia of the group to make it look like an affiliate of BSCEX platform (a legitimate group). Also, the icon used by the scammer was for a new token about to
be launched on the legitimate platform.
Fell for it
I paid some ETH to see where this was going, and frankly I was
genuinely scammed as I thought that the scammer was really going
to 'giveaway' the new tokens or keep his own end of the bargain
by selling his private acquisition of the new tokens. (He did not).
What's worse? He now has my email address, twitter handle
and one of my ERC20 wallet address (to which he has sent no tokens till date).
I knew immediately when there was no email address received acknowledging receipt of the
form that there was a scammer on the loose.
Another telling side was the littering of poor spellings and bad grammar in the sales
pitch/copy. (A less interesting point, since there is no law stating that only those
who communicate effectively in English) may trade cryptos.
Disclaimer
Please note BSCEX is a legitimate concern. However, the owner/user of 0x1DA7829BDbc210Fc8Ad64e499e7B5B88089AaECE (ETH based), pretending to have
engaged in a private sale of BSC.tools (TOOLS) tokens is a scammer.
The telegram group, https://t.me/bscdottools was used for this scam. Meaning
that the operators of this group (who are either long gone by now or stupid) are
affiliates of the scammer.