Old Scams never die. I lost USD$178K about 6 years ago to a binary options scam run by optionbit.com (see earlier postings in FPA). The slimeballs who ran this are still using my historic losses to try and scam more money out of me - by claiming they blockchain.com has found my money and its sitting their in a bank account waiting to return it to me.
I was approached about a week back from "Blockchain.com"'s Finance group in Frankfurt. Their emails come from a domain name of blockchain-frankfurt.de, which does resolve to blockchain.com but I'm guessing that this is nothing more than an a HTTP redirect.
Their story goes that the company running optionbit has been dissolved and they have recovered my funds and they available to return to me. But they can't do this simply by putting into my bank account or putting into my Coinspot wallet, because its "untraceable" money that no one will accept without "proof of funds" and in Australia we have an agency AUSTRAC that will block suspicious trades as part of anti-money laundering. To provide "proof of funds", I need to establish an "international wallet" outside Australia, by creating a new Atomic Wallet (which they supervise with anydesk - which is "far too complex to document"), into which they transfer the funds but I need to transfer $17,000 into the Atomic wallet to provide that "proof of funds" (them asking for money from me is an immediate 'red flag'). When I indicate that I don't have $17,000, the amount suddenly gets lowered to $2,789. They also see my 12 character pass phrase when I create the Atomic Wallet on anydesk. So I'm guessing that no sooner than I had put any money in the wallet that it would have disappeared never to be seen again by me (they will take every cent - they were happy to settle for stealing just $2789 from me this time around).
I did try to check this out with exchange-support@blockchain.com and they told me it wasn't their domain name and it was a scam, but the scammers had a good story that the Blockchain Exchange support desk was just a subcontractor and didn't know about all the parts of the organisation blockchain.com. I was starting to think it may be real again when what appeared to be USD$89K (exactly half of what I lost) appeared in my Atomic Wallet (as 48.96 Ethereum). Still just to be safe, I (luckily) mailed Atomic to ask them why I couldn't transfer the funds input Coinspot or back into my bank account. Well it turns out that their transaction was worthless:
Atomic also explain the scam in more detail in https://support.atomicwallet.io/article/342-wallet-setup-scam (especially in steps 3 and 4 - I got cold called based on my previous experience with optionbit.com, rather than the anonymous email).
So the scammers have the complete record of my losses for 6 years ago and have crafted a story around it and legitimate business, blockchain.com, to put together a half believable story about my money has been recovered. I guess the Israeli's running optionbit are running this too. I guess they are going to be finding new ways to make me live my scamming for many more years to come.
Watchout if you start getting calls claiming to be from blockchain.com and claiming to have recovered your losses, from names like "Philip Williams", Sarah Roberts", Pierre Lainen" and "Joe Biggs".
,
I was approached about a week back from "Blockchain.com"'s Finance group in Frankfurt. Their emails come from a domain name of blockchain-frankfurt.de, which does resolve to blockchain.com but I'm guessing that this is nothing more than an a HTTP redirect.
Their story goes that the company running optionbit has been dissolved and they have recovered my funds and they available to return to me. But they can't do this simply by putting into my bank account or putting into my Coinspot wallet, because its "untraceable" money that no one will accept without "proof of funds" and in Australia we have an agency AUSTRAC that will block suspicious trades as part of anti-money laundering. To provide "proof of funds", I need to establish an "international wallet" outside Australia, by creating a new Atomic Wallet (which they supervise with anydesk - which is "far too complex to document"), into which they transfer the funds but I need to transfer $17,000 into the Atomic wallet to provide that "proof of funds" (them asking for money from me is an immediate 'red flag'). When I indicate that I don't have $17,000, the amount suddenly gets lowered to $2,789. They also see my 12 character pass phrase when I create the Atomic Wallet on anydesk. So I'm guessing that no sooner than I had put any money in the wallet that it would have disappeared never to be seen again by me (they will take every cent - they were happy to settle for stealing just $2789 from me this time around).
I did try to check this out with exchange-support@blockchain.com and they told me it wasn't their domain name and it was a scam, but the scammers had a good story that the Blockchain Exchange support desk was just a subcontractor and didn't know about all the parts of the organisation blockchain.com. I was starting to think it may be real again when what appeared to be USD$89K (exactly half of what I lost) appeared in my Atomic Wallet (as 48.96 Ethereum). Still just to be safe, I (luckily) mailed Atomic to ask them why I couldn't transfer the funds input Coinspot or back into my bank account. Well it turns out that their transaction was worthless:
- "48.96 ETH that you are holding in your wallet is a fake asset that does not have any value on the market, meaning you will not be able to exchange it to real crypto or fiat currency, please have a look - https://etherscan.io/token/0xbd3a19...?a=0x79d5970908b407FD8633C117d02cE1e9b23B69EC"
Atomic also explain the scam in more detail in https://support.atomicwallet.io/article/342-wallet-setup-scam (especially in steps 3 and 4 - I got cold called based on my previous experience with optionbit.com, rather than the anonymous email).
So the scammers have the complete record of my losses for 6 years ago and have crafted a story around it and legitimate business, blockchain.com, to put together a half believable story about my money has been recovered. I guess the Israeli's running optionbit are running this too. I guess they are going to be finding new ways to make me live my scamming for many more years to come.
Watchout if you start getting calls claiming to be from blockchain.com and claiming to have recovered your losses, from names like "Philip Williams", Sarah Roberts", Pierre Lainen" and "Joe Biggs".
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