> scammers are getting more creative and advanced in technique including standing up professional front end websites to give the appearance of legitimacy It se

> scammers are getting more creative and advanced in technique including standing up professional front end websites to give the appearance of legitimacy It seems like this is becoming the minimum standard for scam operations. For example, there is currently a BTC phishing scam going around that tries to convince the user they've accidentally received an email meant for someone else, which just happens to include a link to a million dollars worth of BTC. The website looks legitimate, albeit amateurish, to the point that it could even be convincing to another web developer. The rest of it is much like the OP's scam. It starts with an email from the hacked account of a real bank manager in an Italian town, and is addressed to a real self-proclaimed stock market "guru" from the UK, now living in the US. The email states that 19 BTC has been deposited into an account that was created for them on a site called Coinlux, and they provide the username and password for the account. The Coinlux name was even used by an actual company at one point, so searching for any of the names or details surrounding the scam generates very real and convincing results. Upon visiting the page, you're presented with a moderately professional-ish looking site that asks which fiat currency you want to use and lets you login. You're then prompted to enter a phone number to "secure the account" which, surprisingly, initiates an actual phone call from a number in the UK using a Twilio-like service. After confirming the verification number, you're allowed to view the account, which has some realistic dummy transactions in the history and other features that make the site somewhat believable (it even has a fake chat system and working account recovery). After initiating a withdrawal of any amount, it provides a warning that you should make a small test transaction first (of 0.0001/$4), to ensure that you're sending to the correct BTC address -- after all, you wouldn't want to send 19 BTC to the wrong place and lose it all. It takes much longer than a normal transaction (likely because the scammers are manually initiating them), but it does eventually go through, and they've now succeeded in convincing the user that there is real BTC in the account and you can actually withdraw it. However, if you try to make a larger withdrawal (or a second one at all), you're now presented with an error stating that you're not withdrawing enough, because of a "minimum withdrawal amount" defined when the account was created. This minimum amount happens to be 19.01 BTC, or 0.01 more than is in the actual account currently. So you've successfully withdrawn ~$4, but you have to deposit ~$400 if you want to access the entire 19 BTC. As if it weren't obvious enough at this point, checking the address[1] which sent the 0.0001 makes the entire scam plain as day. This means that anyone with any amount of tech knowledge is probably not susceptible to the scam, though I do think that certain personality types could get caught up in the excitement of potentially "stealing" a million dollars. On the other side, non-techies will likely fall for this in droves, and the transaction history on that address does show there have already been successful victims -- though this particular person's scam has been massively unsuccessful so far, and they may actually be in the red overall. [1] https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qt80xra3r2df8gvzr0pu8vce98ltk6zxlr3fx9z https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1qt80xra3r2df8gvzr0...