Beware: Livestream Crypto Scams On YouTube
- The scammers are using popular figures such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak to try and defraud people.
- They also buff the channels with fake subscribers and viewers to make the livestreams seem more realistic.
Over the last few weeks, YouTube has been flooded with livestreams that are trying to scam people. The way it works is nothing new – scammers ask viewers to send 1 BTC to an address in return for receiving 2 BTC. Something like that.
However, they are now using popular figures and companies, as well as manipulated stats, to add a bit of authority to the scam and potentially defraud more people. The weasels are using the likes of Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, making it seem as if the companies behind them are doing a BTC giveaway for whatever cause.
An example of such a video can be found here. To an experienced person, this is instantly recognized as an obvious scam. But, to people new to the scene, it might not be so obvious. The YouTube channels have viable names (The Woz, Steve Wozniak), millions of subscribers (all fake), and thousands of livestream viewers (also fake). These numbers could easily fool someone not yet aware of the this malicious side of the industry.
YouTube seems to be taking down the streams as fast as they can, but new ones keep popping up and up. We want to urge everyone to be careful when dealing with cryptocurrency and to follow one general rule – if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is. If you see such a livestream, make sure to report it right away so YouTube can take it down asap before people get scammed.
There have already been numerous instances of livestreams being shut down and re-opened again, so the scheme probably works and people have already been defrauded.
- The New York Jurors took 4 fours of deliberating before pronouncing the former FTX CEO guilty of all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.
- Bankman-Fried will now have to appear in court on 28 March, 2024, where he will face a potential maximum sentence of 115 years in prison.
Former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the Federal Court in New York after pleading not guilty, 3 January, 2022.
lev radin/Shutterstock
- Karl Greenwood, co-founder of the OneCoin crypto pyramid scheme, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and ordered to pay back the $300 million he made in commissions.
- Greenwood was the “global master distributor and the leader of the MLM (multi-level marketing) network” during his time in OneCoin, earning him 5% of all monthly sales.
- Faruk Özer and his two siblings were sentenced to 11,196 years in prison for their involvement in the $2 billion rug pull of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex in 2021.
- Özer fled the country after the collapse of the exchange, but was detained in Albania a year later, and extradited back to Türkiye in April 2023 where he faced seven criminal charges.