Crypto Scam Year in Review 2021

 Crypto Scams From ADA to Z

By Dominic Alvieri

@AlvieriD

12-31-2021

Cryptocurrency price records were challenged by volume records of crypto scams this year. Broad Wall Street adoption brought out fraudsters from all corners of the world. Coinbase and Robinhood went public this year and zero-day exploits broke records. Elon Musk became the ultimate crypto spokesman.

Crypto exchanges, DeFi platforms and personal accounts were hacked. Verified social media accounts were breached to further expand crypto fraud this year. Several instances of leveraging smart contract exploitation begins with (redacted)

This is a hacked Twitter account below that attempted a Binance giveaway scam. 

January roared in this year with the events at the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. Financial and criminal litigators sharpened their pencils and went to work. Besides the slew of criminal prosecutions cryptocurrency regulation framework was hashed. Crypto regulation is coming sooner rather than later. 

Stable coins are under reporting assets and deficits abound. Stable coins require serious attention from regulators in my professional view.

Elon Musk became the spokesman for cryptocurrencies this year even making an appearance on Saturday Night live sparking a selling frenzy. Crypto traders hang on to every tweet and make split second decisions in the middle of the night based on Elon's words.

Scammers took note.

One of the many Musk memes

Endless cryptocurrency frauds

Hurry up and take part in all of the fake giveaways using any name and company to gain your trust and get your digital assets.

MicroStrategy

Cardano

Giveaways, Events and AirDrops are all ways to say good bye to your crypto.

Twitter

Social platforms and anything that could make a buck was used. Twittertoken.[live] is still active. Several variations were attempted this year. BEP20 tokens made it easy for anyone to issue just about anything.

Winklevoss twins

Boss Baby themed crypto scam

Baby Coin Mania

 

UFC-Fantoken. Not a fair fight just fraud.

Account credential phishing skyrocketed

Ponzi-type crypto scams came back

These scams are not new but have come back with a vendetta this year. Send me one coin or token and I'll send you one back is a scam that has been around since Bitcoin began. Social media accounts have been big promoters of this old hoodwink.

Promoters or just outright crypto scammers?

Spider-Man token again timed with new movie launch

Bonus

Crypto miner coming with bootleg torrent download of new Spider-Man movie. 

MetaMask fake support(s)

Year end holiday scam rush

Over 600 crypto scams have been personally reported and I can't list all the crypto scams this year but this gives you an idea into the year of zero-days and crypto scams this 2021 has been. Log4J critical logging exploit exploded on the scene late this year and will no doubt have a lingering impact.

Happy New Year

Crypto scams continue even on New Year's Eve and I'm sure I'll catch at least one on New Year's Day.

Crypto scams are not going away anytime soon.

How do the scammers get away with it?

In many cases they just don't give anything away at all. One new Twitter account allegedly gave away over $81,000 in under one month. Other instances have the scammers just recycle the crypto giving a token amount to a controlled account.

No one is auditing these giveaways. 

A so called "Crypto Professor" with 120,000+ followers even set up a trading firm and site which have been closed. The site alleged an unsustainable 4-6% daily return, ie scam. Coming in January.

Meta New Year

Not from Facebook or Meta.

Do your due diligence 

If it sounds like a duck...

The Cyber Show

by Dominic Alvieri

Twitter @AlvieriD

Men Pretending to Be Women in Crypto

InfoSec Seinfeld do you know who else is a man?

By Dominic Alvieri

@AlvieriD

11/20/2021

Fake account and shady investment warnings. These female accounts have man hands and Twitter thumbs.

A picture tells a thousand words. A jpeg tells thousands of bytes. More actually and precious metadata. Location, camera lens, etc. These images above are the snapshots used by several woman of crypto currently online believed to operated by men.  Students, models, actors and all walks of life are used.

Stella Catrin @stellacatrin
Joined November 2021
10,000 followers. 

Today is November 21st, 2021.

This new image used above was taken by Omar Lopez and is fresh from Orlando, Florida in April and uploaded in May 2021. She is new, dangerous and readily available online for free. I would expect to see her image again. More examples to watch out for. Data points an alleged foreign man behind this Californian woman. Suspect name is unconfirmed as of posting.

Super Model Thylane Blondeau is now crypto investor Henley Nava. Thylane has been named the most beautiful in the world. Now pitching Chinese mining among other suspect investments. 

Monday, November 22nd, 2021 addition.

Henley Nava @henleynava
June 2021
58,000 followers

This account has been "giving" away crypto and pitching suspect mining and crypto. The modus operandi is similar in pattern and recognition to the suspected accounts in this article. 

Another suspected fake has even more data pointing to India including Twitter handles, IP addresses, Telegram chats and more. There is even a name for the man behind one of "The Janet Trio."

Newest active part of the Janet Trio...

Taya Janet @tayajanet
Joined August 2021
62,000 followers

The man in the photograph is Gopal Krishna and alleged new Taya Janet. An aspiring Linux developer and failed movie critic from Mumbai, India. Irrefutable technical evidence links this man to this account. If it isn't him, he sure knows who it is. Money is on the sloppy developer.

Gopal Krishna
Joined unknown
Mumbai, India
Twitter profile...

One of several missed forensic links left behind by Mr. Krishna...a link to a Twitter account.

Adhish Ramkurrun. Another forgotten fake account. Technically sloppy.

From Montreal to Minsk...and Medium.

These crypto queens above and below are retweeting the same garbage as their group. One is a self proclaimed Crypto Professor with nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter and he and the crypto queen below have very similar tweets and likes. Yesterday a Chinese mining "legit investment.' Today multiple tweets with mining and investments many registered the same day of September 2nd.

Tron[.]AC,  TRX[.]Blue and TRX[.]ST are all registered on September 2nd, 2021. All three share the same IP and have obfuscated their origins. Two of the three are utilizing a Singapore data center to forward packets to China. There are many others registered, Tron-Life, TRX[.]in...

A Russian man is operating out of Belize is behind an account. A Chinese national is also guilty of running crypto scams. Both pending confirmation.

The Professor is Gilligan

Crypto Queen @coin_mining1
Joined June 2021
40,000 followers

Associating with Russian tweets and Chinese mining.

Does anyone verify these giveaways? 

The amount of crap tweeted today is unbelievable. All have tweeted again today, November 21st, 2021 The Professor is acting like Gilligan tweeting hidden Chinese based mining and other shady crypto investments.

Building a crypto followers database is as valuable a commodity as a crypto brokerage firm breach. You can cross reference data, send malicious cryptominers, clipboard stealers...

There is a new trading firm just found with ties to other crypto scams, follow up details and reveals pending.

Stay safe.

Dominic Alvieri

The Cyber Show