3 ms·

edit: updated his wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0x1065d87094f8A2498D4beeD80915e9dfD9350fB5 https://etherscan.io/address/0x1065d87094f8A2498D4beeD80915e..

edit: updated his wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0x1065d87094f8A2498D4beeD80915e9dfD9350fB5 https://etherscan.io/address/0x1065d87094f8A2498D4beeD80915e... (20k) old wallet https://etherscan.io/address/0x1e8a23B17e0248F9155B7BdA70e75d8721D58b13 https://etherscan.io/address/0x1e8a23B17e0248F9155B7BdA70e75... ($120k) I have never seen anything like this. It makes even Walter White's fictitious drug empire seem like a amateur hour by comparison in terms of net profit and just the massive scale of this operation. Even hollywood cannot create a better crime than this. 90% of the victim wallets in these scams are Coinbase wallets. I do not know why lawmakers and attorney generals are not taking this more seriously given that Coinbase is an American company and Americans are being defrauded to the tune of millions of dollars a week. Crypto crime is bigger than drug crime given that crypto is worth $2 trillion. It should be taken as seriosly as such.

skim_milk 5y ago
Wow, I would have just assumed that all the money in the wallets were laundered to give the impression of credibility, but it sounds like you're saying the quarter million dollars in those wallets are likely all from real people? And with 6000 live youtube viewers as well, probably not all bots!? And their website is down even with Cloudflare DDOS protection, meaning their website is probably being overloaded by legitimate traffic?? I've stumbled across variants of "play video of smart people talking about complex topic with link to unrelated scam to get people to build trust and click through" but I never knew how successful they were until now with crypto transactions being open and such.
- applesapl 5y ago
  It's all real..it's insane. I don't think the media, policy makers understand the scope of the problem. Literally anyone with a crypto acocunt and who watches youtube is at risk. We're talking millions of people. In the span of two weeks youtube scammers earned as much as the colonel pipeline hack, but no media coverage, no fbi invovement.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    FBI and media doesn't really care if some crypto speculators lose their shirts. The Colonial hack shut down real world infrastructure which is got everyone interested.
  - cma 5y ago
    Isn't this ultimately positive, for spreading negative experiences with crypto, which could free up electricity for cancer research (protein folding or something)?
  - skim_milk 5y ago
    I wonder if it would be useful to keep track of known-scam crypto addresses for the purpose of informing policy makers. Say there was a website where you could upload evidence of crypto scams and, say, get points for the effort of uncovering it once verified and compare your total score to other users on the website. That would be a fun project and go a long way towards showing policy makers how prevalent crypto scams are
applesapl 5y ago
new address https://etherscan.io/address/0x292a727025726A5eb28de4B5FecbB618FF8b841F https://etherscan.io/address/0x292a727025726A5eb28de4B5FecbB... this guy is pro. not your typical scammer. changes addresses often.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jollybean 5y ago
People are being defrauded of magic numbers, not money. It only just so happens that a lot of people with time and money on their hands want to trade magic numbers, which they deem to be worth money, but as long as they just a kind of fiction, then why we care? Why should the US government spend valuable time, effort and energy hunting down the scammers among the hyper speculators taking incredible risks with their money with no benefit to anyone?
- applesapl 5y ago
  I don't think that would hold in any court of law, clearly the FBI treats ransomware ransoms as money.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Forcing universities and hospitals to play in the gambler's game with real money is bad, yes. It's further reason to view crypto as a net negative and to just ban it entirely.
reginold 5y ago
Another interesting aspect is it appears to be using a hacked YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos This channel RallyArgentinooficial at least appears valid, with rally videos going back 3+ years ago with thousands of views.
- applesapl 5y ago
  This is an ongoing problem. there is a market for stolen accounts accs-market .com But I don't know where the fake concurrent live viewers come from, shows 5-20k online.
  - reginold 5y ago
    Well at least a few of the viewers are from HN :o)
mike_d 5y ago
Just moved to a new wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0xe10f547EceC6439eEDb848aB70a8d3A35cD0EFB5 https://etherscan.io/address/0xe10f547EceC6439eEDb848aB70a8d...

skim_milk 5y ago

Wow, I would have just assumed that all the money in the wallets were laundered to give the impression of credibility, but it sounds like you're saying the quarter million dollars in those wallets are likely all from real people? And with 6000 live youtube viewers as well, probably not all bots!? And their website is down even with Cloudflare DDOS protection, meaning their website is probably being overloaded by legitimate traffic?? I've stumbled across variants of "play video of smart people talking about complex topic with link to unrelated scam to get people to build trust and click through" but I never knew how successful they were until now with crypto transactions being open and such.

applesapl 5y ago
It's all real..it's insane. I don't think the media, policy makers understand the scope of the problem. Literally anyone with a crypto acocunt and who watches youtube is at risk. We're talking millions of people. In the span of two weeks youtube scammers earned as much as the colonel pipeline hack, but no media coverage, no fbi invovement.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  FBI and media doesn't really care if some crypto speculators lose their shirts. The Colonial hack shut down real world infrastructure which is got everyone interested.
- cma 5y ago
  Isn't this ultimately positive, for spreading negative experiences with crypto, which could free up electricity for cancer research (protein folding or something)?
- skim_milk 5y ago
  I wonder if it would be useful to keep track of known-scam crypto addresses for the purpose of informing policy makers. Say there was a website where you could upload evidence of crypto scams and, say, get points for the effort of uncovering it once verified and compare your total score to other users on the website. That would be a fun project and go a long way towards showing policy makers how prevalent crypto scams are

applesapl 5y ago

new address https://etherscan.io/address/0x292a727025726A5eb28de4B5FecbB618FF8b841F https://etherscan.io/address/0x292a727025726A5eb28de4B5FecbB... this guy is pro. not your typical scammer. changes addresses often.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jollybean 5y ago

People are being defrauded of magic numbers, not money. It only just so happens that a lot of people with time and money on their hands want to trade magic numbers, which they deem to be worth money, but as long as they just a kind of fiction, then why we care? Why should the US government spend valuable time, effort and energy hunting down the scammers among the hyper speculators taking incredible risks with their money with no benefit to anyone?

applesapl 5y ago
I don't think that would hold in any court of law, clearly the FBI treats ransomware ransoms as money.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Forcing universities and hospitals to play in the gambler's game with real money is bad, yes. It's further reason to view crypto as a net negative and to just ban it entirely.

reginold 5y ago

Another interesting aspect is it appears to be using a hacked YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/RallyArgentinooficial/videos This channel RallyArgentinooficial at least appears valid, with rally videos going back 3+ years ago with thousands of views.

applesapl 5y ago
This is an ongoing problem. there is a market for stolen accounts accs-market .com But I don't know where the fake concurrent live viewers come from, shows 5-20k online.
- reginold 5y ago
  Well at least a few of the viewers are from HN :o)

mike_d 5y ago

Just moved to a new wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0xe10f547EceC6439eEDb848aB70a8d3A35cD0EFB5 https://etherscan.io/address/0xe10f547EceC6439eEDb848aB70a8d...