Crypto 360°

Saturday, 3 October 2020

Cryptopearl.net - part of a well-organized crypto scam ring

Hello reddit! I've done a bit of digging into a scam ring. This all started from a random stranger messaging me today to help them get their crypto off of cryptopearl.net. They say they want to get their crypto off an exchange because they need to help their sick father who's in Egypt and has Covid, but because they moved countries recently, they can't pull it off for 9 days due to "fraud protection rules" and because all their friends are in China, they can't talk with any of their friends. Their account is geo-locked and then they ask you to mule it for them... the only catch is that you have to pay 0.03 BTC to "verify" your account on the exchange and withdraw said sum for your new pal. Said scammer says they'll totally pay you back and not to worry.

Just to make sure it's obvious, anything you send to this exchange or it's ilk will be sent straight to the pocket of scammers.

I've seen this site and sites like it many times over the last couple of years. I've done some digging through their site and found some very interesting stuff.

The images on their chat are all steam cdn profile pictures. And the element's class reads as "image for chat message" instead of profile picture or something a sane developer would use. It's just conjecture... but I feel like a very in-experienced developer put this together.
The description for the site: "Founded in London in 2013, the leading..." was lifted directly from cex.io (a real crypto exchange)
Whois lookup states their site was registered January 2020. A bit odd for something that exists entirely as an online-business... I guess they didn't have a site for 7 years? lol.
Digging beyond the first page references another site called "expohills" (now offline) which is linked in this steemit article as a scam: https://steemit.com/steem/@summisimeon/expohills-com-a-new-scam-website-073bf1e0121f6. Surprise! The site looks nearly identical!
csrf token changes when refreshed in a new browser session, so there is some kind of page generation going on instead of just a straight javascript/html/css site.

A search for a very specific text from the site "Your payment will be completed after confirmation by the network" came up with a long list of very interesting exchanges that all seem to be identical:

I checked about half of these... and each one was using cloudflare to hide the real server's location. I wonder how u/cloudflare feels about their services supporting scam rings?

Certainly also of interest, I found https://qna.habr.com/q/646554 where a chap going by dimavfox appears to be working on the source code for the above sites! The savvy reader can realize that the website is in Russian.

My Google search that gave the above sites said in total there were about 175 sites. (Many of which are now offline)

This appears to be a fairly large scam. They must be making decent money off of it because the sites are still up and new sites keep getting setup.

There appears to be some kind of central control, as all the sites get the same chat messages at the same time... but logging in and posting a chat message on one site does not propagate to the other sites.

Please be careful everyone! Do not implicitly trust any random site or sob story a stranger shares with you. Make sure you do the smell test. Does it seem like I might get something for doing very little? Do I have to put money or personal details on-the-line before I receive the alleged many-times-greater reward? Is the stranger saying they'll be "doing me a favor?" It's most likely not real.

submitted by /u/sokol815
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/j498el/cryptopearlnet_part_of_a_wellorganized_crypto/

Citizen Bitcoin: Max Hillebrand: The Bitcoin Nomad - E104

submitted by /u/BashCo
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Hey there! I’m fairly new to the crypto space and would like some resources to get more educated.

Hey there, I’m fairly new to the crypto space and I’m trying to educate myself on it as much as possible. Any advice on where to start? Articles? Videos? Anything to help myself get more versed in the space. I’ve already started investing, and I would just like to be mire educated.

submitted by /u/Therealperu
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Bitcoin-Gold correlation hits all-time high

Is BTC now a 'safe haven’?

https://www.cryptovantage.com/news/bitcoin-gold-correlation-hits-all-time-high-is-btc-now-a-safe-haven/

submitted by /u/thecryptovantage
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Another major update to the Bitcoin Cash Register app

submitted by /u/MemoryDealers
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/j47iz4/another_major_update_to_the_bitcoin_cash_register/

How BTC money laundering gets indirectly promoted in US

It's no big surprise that BTC casinos have had a sketchy history of money laundering and stealing players BTC. But trying to maintain a site that continues to do so has been extremely difficult especially in the US where online gaming has been outlawed. One company has been successfully able to keep these sites alive and thriving through their clever marketing techniques. Catena Media is a legally liscnesed 'igaming' sales and marketing company in the US. They are best known for owing the site Ask Gamblers. Com which handles disputes between players and BTC casinos. What most people don't know is that, though their offshore business in Malta, they are also able to simultaneously represent and work for many of the same BTC gaming businesses that are illegal here in the US. What this means is that here in the US they can promote these sites since they technically have no ties to them within US borders. This would be a worthless endeavor if something wasn't done about the countless complaints that have surfaced about their clients companies. Ask Gamblers.com is the key to making their business model work. By making a site that handles complaints that would otherwise be made public, they are actually able to surpress this information preventing it from public eyes. Who are the most highly ranked websites on AG? you guessed it, Catena Media's clients. This affiliation to known money laundering operations would make them an easy target for law enforcement if it wasn't for their segmented business operations. I got to hand it to Catena Media, they are some smart business folk.

submitted by /u/dangerDLC
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/j47jw7/how_btc_money_laundering_gets_indirectly_promoted/

BitMex Charged With Illegally Operating Derivatives Exchange

submitted by /u/mrsotkogaming
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/j47i1t/bitmex_charged_with_illegally_operating/