Warning List – Be Aware of These Crypto Scams!

Here is Crypto Lists own warning list aka blacklist. Like the name suggests, you will be able to find warnings and is suggested to be cautious about various coins, tokens, crypto exchanges, platforms, brokers, DEX and casinos found below.

Some of the company’s mentioned below might be pure scammers, while others just try to bend the truth a bit. In either case, Crypto Lists tries to highlight misrepresentation and false information provided by some firms, and also brings up warnings based on customer complaints. Obviously, we always try to dig deep to find out what the error might be before appearing on the warning list. This is not necessarily a sign to not use the crypto sites mentioned, but rather a warning to beware of before investing. Please find the crypto warning list below and see common practices among potential scammers:

What to look out for?

The crypto scammers are changing company names every so often to avoid being listed on warning pages like this. They also often used well known company names so that if you as victim would search for the name on Google, you would see positive reviews or happy customers. They simple “steal” the name or use a similar name to accomplish a level of trust. With this said, it is important to be careful and always be suspicious when handling your crypto currencies with strangers involved. If you get a phone call from someone offering to help with your crypto, whether it’s related to “lost Bitcoin” or some kind of magical investment that has a very high return guaranteed – stay away regardless what the name of the company who is calling you. These phone calls are made in the thousands every day all over the world and not seldom based on hacked information from crypto exchanges or companies where customers would have registered to a serious service at some point. Below is a list of some serious crypto companies who have got their email database hacked and leaked, which is now abused by the scammers by emailing you pretending to be representing that company or just using it because they know you have had some interest in crypto currencies previously; hence increasing their success rate of scamming their victims.

Companies who have been hacked and/or with leaked email/phone details

Below you can see some examples of companies where the email database has been leaked or email addresses picked up through sniffing and used for phishing attacks. Be extra careful if you have had accounts with these companies, as they are often abused for phishing purposes.
– AT&T – Used to access the email accounts linked to accounts on crypto exchanges.
– Bitcoin Magazine – Spam/phishing emails stating that “Your wallet has been Blocked!“.
– Bithumb
– BitMEX
– BlockFi
– BTC Markets (largest crypto exchange in Australia)
– Celsius Network – As part of the bankruptcy filing 15000 personal crypto wallets were revealed to the public including their balances and ENS names.
– Circle
– Coinmama
– CoinMarketCap
– Deribit
– FlyTAP (the airline) – The portuguese airline, since a lot of crypto people live in or travel to Portugal.
– GDAC
– Gemini
– GokuMarket – A centralized crypto exchange owned by ByteX.
– HubSpot
– Inputs.io
– LCX
– Ledger – One of the most popular hardware crypto wallet companies. Most often used by people with decent amounts of crypto currencies spending 50-100 USD just on the device.
– Metamask – Some of the emails of users who were in contact with the Metamask support got their email addresses leaked.
– Nexo – Spam/Scam emails received to Nexo-only email addresses has been reported by multiple users.
– NYDIG
– OpenSea
– Pantera Capital
…and certainly quite a few more. Always be careful and suspicious when opening emails, clicking links, authenticating on websites or signing with your crypto wallets.

Flappy Casino – Closing your account if you win

There have been multiple issues with Flappy Casino (review). Many players have complained to us that they cannot withdraw after winning. Often, they instead get IP blocked. That is the techniques of some real scammers. So make sure to not play on Flappy Casino, since it’s not a professional site and they seem to be doing everything they can to confiscate funds from players. Avoid this crypto casino site – and try one of the serious ones instead that you can find on our toplists. For partners, they also have tracking that doesn’t even register clicks.

Wagerinox – Claims to pay out instantly, but don’t reply and don’t pay

The first months was OK with Wagerinox, but they quickly turned ugly. They stopped replying, stopped paying out winnings to customers. For the newest Bitcoin casinos, it’s always important to test and see so they actually work and pay out continuously – since things often can change after big winners or changed regulatory conditions. In the case with Wagerinox – they have simply gone quiet and don’t reply to any questions – so it’s clear that they are scammers. Wagerinox is only in it to scam their customers – and should be avoided. There are hundreds of better Bitcoin casinos around to enjoy.

GunBet Casino – Said they will give out part of the profit, but didn’t

They said: We are going to give out 30% of the profit of the casino to the biggest Gunbet token holders.
Reality: It turns out that it was just a scam. Instead of giving out any profit or rev share, Gunbet Casino (see review) just went quiet, the liquidity went lower and lower and eventually they just shut down.
Conclusion: Be careful with casino tokens where they have low liquidity. That is usually a first warning sign that something is not right.

CoinGames Casino – A disappointing decentralized casino

Despite having .fun as their domain, we realized after some trial an error that it really isn’t much fun at all playing with these guys. Read on to find out why…

After long discussions with CoinGames (see review), where they first asked to buy placements on CryptoLists they backed out by simply not paying for their agreed commitments. Trying to overcome that, we proceeded, but they again proved not to be serious about doing the right thing. Once we could demonstrate that they had technical issues, they confirmed the issues, but did not take responsibility for them. Instead, they shifted blame on to various circumstances. If this is how they do business, we recommend to stay away from them as well as their other Coingames.bet site and choose a different crypto casino with a higher rating from our toplist.

Bitget – Claims to have licenses, but don’t have it

They said: We have crypto licenses in 3 countries.
Reality: There is no real crypto license available for any of the three companies related to Bitget. It’s a warning sign that they hide the company names on all places where they write out the proof of licensing. We also got confirmation from the licensing bodies that they don’t have any licenses.
Conclusion: One of the recently found misrepresentations is from Bitget (see review).

Bitcoin UP – Not related to Elon Musk

They said: Elon Musk uses Bitcoin UP.
Reality: No, Elon Musk does not use Bitcoin UP at all. He is a fan of Dogecoin and got his own Shiba Inu dog called Floki.
Conclusion: Don’t invest with Bitcoin UP and simply block when their telemarketing team calls you from several different phone numbers. One of our visitors had this problem, that Bitcoin UP calls them from multiple numbers and tries to get you to deposit. Do not deposit with them.

OhMyZino by ohmygaming partners

Oh My Zinho and variants they use, such as Oh My Zinho 66 – is not a trusted brand. Their staff slander various other brands, got among the worst support teams in the industry and have multiple player complaints. They only got payment processors for crypto and tend to restrict people that use bonuses from taking out their money. In order to confused the players, they have six different types of wagering and tend to promote one of the lower wagering requirement but apply the 45 times version instead.

Betstro

Another scam brand from the group behind Oh My Zinho is called Betstro. Crypto Lists heard several stories of people that got denied to withdraw money after winning rather small amounts. Several people have complained about withdrawal issues from Betstro. The company behind is called Green Feather Online Limited and they are tied to Game Tech Group N.V and Russian founders.

Orbeon – Several scam pre-sales

Orbeon Protocol is a dodgy launchpad created by scammers, to steal money from customers. They made it impossible to withdraw crypto bought from the so-called pre-sale, which in reality was just a scam-show from a couple of Brits. In order to make it sound attractive, they call it venture capital and Crowdfunding Reinvented.
They said: We are having a pre-sale again. You get a 10% discount. For the 6th time. Oki..
Reality: They made it impossible for people to claim their tokens, without paying excessive amounts that was above the cost of the pre-sale. It was a way to scam clients, and for the founders to take out the money invested by poor people around the world.
Conclusion: Be careful with discount offers and pre-sales, especially the repeated ones.

Bitcoin Era – Not endorsed by any celebrities

They said: This and that celebrity use Bitcoin Era.
Reality: No celebrity that Crypto Lists is aware of uses Bitcoin Era, but many famous people are angry because they use their name without permission.
Conclusion: There have been lots of issues with Bitcoin Era in Scandinavia and many lost money from them. We recommend avoiding this firm.

Common practices of crypto scammers

As cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have become more and more popular, there are stories of people who have made a lot of money in a short time. Fraudsters are also using this to deceive their victims. There are many different approaches scammers use to trick their victims. If something sounds too simple or good to be true, then it probably is.

Below we mention some of them. But scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated and advanced in how they trick their “customers” (victims), so just because what we describe below doesn’t match exactly, it doesn’t mean they aren’t scammers. Be careful! If you have questions about a specific site or situation, don’t hesitate to contact our live chat and we can help you make an assessment of the credibility. Going with your gut is a good first step.

Did you forget about your Bitcoin?

Many scammers claim they call from a major brand, such as Binance or Coinbase, and tell you about some “lost bitcoin”. Remember that none of these companies would call you out of the blue. They don’t call customers and talk about lost Bitcoins. If that happens, it’s most likely because they are scammers. Crypto Lists had over 50 different stories about someone claiming to be a big brand calling them and many in fact think that they have bought bitcoin and forgot the password or whatever it might be. If you for some reason forgot about some Bitcoin wallet, rather search your old mobile phone, look for notes written down or similar – rather than going for one of the most common scams on Crypto Lists warning page – the “call about your forgotten Bitcoin wallet”. No, you most likely don’t have a few or hundreds or thousands in a wallet that somebody else knows about. Our best advice is to simply hang up and take out the lost Bitcoins yourself – without any middleman (scammer) that try to make you pay different fees to get them out – before they disappear.

Some of the lost BTC scammers try to send you a software to download – but it’s just a way to get control of your money. Never install any software from unknown sources and don’t accept remote computer access to find your Bitcoin. It’s a huge risk to allow anything like that. Don’t get scammed by this old trick and be careful with calls from unknown people that give you the opportunity to earn money from cryptocurrencies or any lost coins and tokens.

Crypto Trading with Scott Wilson – Cannot take out the money

Many people on Telegram get this kind of offer with people saying they are great at crypto trading and can make your money grow. Make sure you do due diligence before investing in all those cases, and be aware that most of those offers are from scammers. If they are good enough, why not trade for themselves? Why try to find new customers on Telegram?

Anyway, Crypto Lists got a report from a mum called Catarina. A guy called Scott Wilson (email: [email protected]) convinced her son to invest 100 USD in crypto. In “only 3 days”, the money grew to 1500 USD, then to 4500 USD and finally 12000 USD after 10 days – said the scammer. The most likely scenario is that no funds were invested into crypto and the huge gains after just 10 days in a bear market also sounds very unlikely.

Next step in the story include that Catarina’s son is trying to get out his “huge profit”, at least 11 000 USD out of 12k. He wanted to make the transfer to a bank account or to Paypal. In order to take out money, he had to pay “maintenance fees” of several 100 USD, multiple times. In order to secure the money or crypto on the platform, he had to upgrade to Diamond level and later to Gold level that cost 750 USD. Over 1200 USD has been paid in various fees to Scott Wilson, that in reality seems to be called Robson Elias Da Silva. His email for PayPal is: [email protected]. He may use any kind of company name related to crypto, or he can use ForexHomeTrade as the business name. In either case, if you like to trade crypto, sign-up for a serious crypto exchange instead of sending money randomly to some stranger.

Ways to identify fake crypto exchanges

Our best advice is to stick with trusted exchanges with over 9.2 in rating. A reliable exchange for crypto investing should be regulated and licensed in the jurisdiction where you live. If not, there is almost no chance to get the money back in case they decide to run away, close down or claim they have gone bankrupt.

Some further warning signs and red flags include, but is not limited to:
-Exceptional returns that are guaranteed.
-Their brand name sounds very similar to a legitimate business.
-The fake or questionable crypto exchange calls you up from different numbers and tries to make you deposit. This should be a decision for yourself, and don’t accept being pushed into doing any investments. Take your time. Do your research.
-Super high bonuses that do not make any sense.
-Any crypto website that gets red alerts from your anti-virus program is most likely not legitimate.
-Do not reply to all messages on Telegram. Many are from scammers that copy the picture of some famous person. Make sure to dig a bit deeper before you even reply to them.

5 Common crypto scams

Below are some of the most common scams in the cryptocurrency industry and how to see through it and avoid falling into the trap..

Crypto exchange tax scams

An increasingly common crypto scam involve adjusting (increasing) the exchange fees (eg. buy and sell taxes) to unbearable levels. Be cautious with coins and tokens with a buy or sell tax above 10% and be cautious with new cryptocurrencies. Many tokens that often adjust their fees for selling a cryptocurrency may not always be crypto scams, but there is an increased risk of you losing money. They might do it in order to stop bots or those trying to adjust prices, but it also affects both long and short term investors when the selling tax is higher than the standard 1-2%.

Crypto celebrity scams

Using celebrity names in ads on social media to convince people to buy scam tokens and send money to “investment” companies is getting increasingly common. Anyone may present a celebrity, even if they have not agreed on the promotion. Many business people, models and TV personalities fall victim for scammers that use their name in bad faith. Others simply pay cryptocurrency influencers to stand out from the crowd and appear to be a legitimate brand – before they take your money (or crypto) and run away.

Telegram scams involving crypto

One of the most typical scams in Telegram groups involve a person sending you a message, pretending to be the same person as the moderator in the group, or one of the group admins. Those scamming individuals are seldom members of the Telegram Group; they just use a more or less identical name and the same profile image as a moderator or admin. While real moderators and admins never send you a message first, ever – this is exactly what those crypto scammers on Telegram are doing. So if you ever get contacted by someone that seems to be a highly ranked community member, be careful. Many of those Telegram scammers are sending a fake crypto contract, that is faking the name of real crypto coins or contracts in an attempt to get people to buy coins from fake contracts. Always confirm the correct crypto coin contract name from a reputable crypto site like CryptoLists.com or from the official website. Tips: Do you know that Crypto Lists always feature the original contract of all coins and tokens that are reviewed. By using the official contract, you can be sure to not get in trouble. Make sure to always double check with the official website for each coin and token before you buy and view the latest transactions for a specific cryptocurrency in order to see the activity, price action and current usage.

Using famous TV-shows or Films as Coin Names

When the popular TV-series thriller Squid Game was really hot, some shady people launched the Squid Game token on the BNB network. The business model focuses on maximizing marketing and expectations for the future, promising NFTs and lots of staking rewards to holders/investors. The Squid Game cryptocurrency reached billion dollars in market cap during its peak, before the founders pulled out all of their investments and the token fell over 99.5% in a couple of days. Always be a bit extra cautious when a crypto casino or crypto coin/token got a name that’s confusingly similar to a popular tv-show, film, celebrity and so on. Most times, it’s a scam that’s set up to milk people for money as quickly as possible.

Crypto casino scam list

The amount of crypto casino scams are increasing every day. It’s easier to get in and become an operator (eg. casino) since little or no KYC is required, both from the company itself and it’s customers.

FAQ: What you need to know

Here are some common terms and phrases that you might have heard about and want to know more about.

What is a honeypot in Crypto?

One of the common scams is when you buy a coin/token and the contract is set-up so you cannot sell the cryptocurrency. It’s most common for newly launched cryptocurrencies.

Another type of more advanced honeypot in crypto is when after you bought the token, they will automatically blacklist your wallet address, which prohibits you from selling the crypto. This type of honeypot is more complicated to identify, because everything may look alright before buying into the cryptocurrency.

What is a rug pull?

A rug pull in crypto involves removing the rug – which in this case is the liquidity. Without liquidity, the token is dead and you’ve been involved in a crypto rug pull.