In a recent post, a fake account of Mike Novogratz offered to give away 5 thousand Bitcoin (BTC) to help people in this time of crisis.
It is clearly a scam and the modus operandi is similar to others of this type: the unsuspecting victims are asked to send a sum in bitcoin (between 0.01 BTC and 20 BTC) saying that it will be returned with interest, hence a very profitable and easy system, if only it were true.
The post also invites to go to a website, created on May 19th. In order to deceive the victims, it features all the necessary information and the logo of Galaxy Digital, of which Novogratz is the CEO, complete with fake counters and fake transactions.
It also contains the logo of Bitcoin.com, which criminals have renamed “Official Bitcoin Channel”, causing even more confusion among users as to who would have created this giveaway.
How to identify a scam
In any case, understanding that it is a fake is simple: it is enough to check the address created by the criminals to discover that everything that is promised is false and all the transactions that are reported do not exist but are generated at random.
Moreover, by checking the code on the page, there is no effort on the part of the criminals to write the full address but only random numbers, even using a wrong order of blocks, not to mention the impossible speed at which these transactions are executed.
So far nothing was stolen
Fortunately, from what can be viewed through the BTC address published by the criminals, no one has yet fallen into the trap. Hopefully, as time goes on, fewer and fewer people will fall into this type of scam, becoming more knowledgeable and aware of how the industry works.
