We Investigated Altredx: Legit or Scam? The Facts

Recently, Altredx.com website surfaced, promoting itself as a place to store cryptocurrency and other assets securely. I managed to gather reliable supporting information that clearly reveals it is, actually, a fraudulent platform.

Regardless of the promises of the most easy, reliable, and customer-centric service, Altredx.com does not follow any of them. All this is just a shiny wrap around a blatant scam, which takes your money and data and never returns them. Any stories about bonuses, backing from celebrities etc are non-existent as well.

Altredx Scam Overview

Originally, Altredx poses as a crypto trading & cryptowallet service with remarkably low commission fees. Another highlighted selling point for this service is partnerships with celebrities that are known in the crypto world. Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Vitalii Buterin, Jeff Bezos – the site claims having significant support from them. To make these claims look real, con actors use AI-generated videos where those celebrities promote the fraud as the best thing in the world. For known reasons, Elon Musk is the most common among them. But, as I mentioned above, all this is just a glaring wrap around a transparent scam.

Altredx Scam

To begin with, Altredx repeats the appearance of numerous equivalent pages. There are quite a few examples, like Panexer, Coinxluxe or Goiconbit. They are entirely indistinguishable in terms of graphic elements, with slight discrepancies in the webpage header. Other details, and sometimes even crypto wallet addresses, are matching. Presumably, all these scam sites are led by a single team of scoundrels.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Altredx Scam Works?

Altredx is a part of a extensive cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating vividly in 2023. Scammers who stand behind it use several website designs, which still share the identical overall layout. Another common element are the ways the scams like NAME are promoted, and the manner all this ends up to the victim of the scam. To reach peak efficiency, frauds apply sophisticated psychological tricks that make the user believe in the validity of the website. But let’s review them one by one.

Step 1: Promotion

To initiate the deceptive scheme, criminals establish and fill accounts on popular social media platforms. They primarily target Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the advertising campaign starts. Utilizing bots and paid ads (when achievable), fraud actors boost the visibility of their fraudulent activities to possible victims. And as I said, crooks do not shy away using deepfake for creating clips with the mentioned celebs that advertise their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, frauds claim the bonus for every user who registers the service immediately.

Promotions of cryptoscams like Altredx in TikTok. Most of these videos are AI-generated deepfakes

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

Upon clicking the promotions, users end up on a page filled with appealing offers. “Crypto starts with Altredx”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Altredx, “Start earning with Altredx – they look rather reliable. To heat up users and make them proceed to step 3, scammers say that getting the pledged bonus requires registration. And since nothing suspicious happens at this point, unaware users happily keep on – especially since the reward appears to be right behind the corner.

At this point, it is possible to skip the scam without any losses. Before you register using your personal info, crooks will not earn even a penny from your presence on the website.

Step 3: Data Gathering

This is the starting poing of the main fraud action. As I just mentioned, frauds bait folks for registration with bonuses. And all the personal data needed for it – username, email, crypto wallet address – are valuable for user identification. Exclusively by gathering this information and selling it further into the Darknet, crooks can earn quite a penny. Nonetheless, their plans go much further.

As it turns out, the alleged bonus is not available to use right away. To make at least cryptocurrency purchases on the platform with it, the user should top up the account with the equivalent sum. At this point, the final stage of the scam kicks in.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Obviously, any crypto purchases require having money on your account. In the case of Altredx, users are also coerced to top up to claim the bonuses. And these top ups is what creates most of the money flow to this fraudulent website. By topping up the account, users hope to get the promised gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start participating on this website hoping to use all the transferred capital and withdraw them.

This is where the first obvious problems start to surface. When comparing the real crypto wallet vs what the site says, you can observe that no transactions are done whatsoever. And then, when you’d try to retrieve the funds from your account, the scam is finally uncovered to the user.

Step 5: Escaping from Funds Withdrawal

There’s no need to explain that swindlers are naught on intentions to give your money back. But to make the fraud look more legitimate, they’ve developed a whole bunch of reasons to decline the withdrawal request. Most of them repeat what Know Your Client regulations say, but in this case they are here only to make the wireout impossible.

By asking for your personal data, deceivers just stall hoping for you to understand that you’ve been scammed and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are multiple other checks you should go through before getting your funds back. And every check will uncover more and more information, which – you guessed it right – will be then traded on the Darknet. Never reveal your real info to strangers!

Signs of Scam

I gathered several facts that point at the scammy nature of the Altredx.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

• Absent company details. Altredx does not provide any documentation about its ownership, location or registration. No legitimate contact details are given either. Moreover, it appears that the domain and all social network pages were registered quite recently.
• Fake sponsorship from a celebrity. Scams like Altredx like to pick a celebrity as a sponsor of this entire campaign. For obvious reasons, fraudsters generally choose Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mr. Beast, Mark Zuckerberg, and similar celebrities. They do not disdain claiming partnership with a company as well. Even though Coinbase, Binance or MetaMask never heard of Altredx, they do not care – this creates a halo of credibility.
• Potential Ponzi Scheme. The scam relies on a Ponzi-like referral system to spread reach through social media. In fact, only the first members will receive the payoff, at the cost of the money brought by other members.
• Hype without facts. Frauds can cheer up their victims from time to time, using claims about non-existent events. “We got contracts with Coinbase”, “Elon Musk mentioned us as the most prolific crypto project” – you could likely hear something like that. This is made to make people believe in their money return. This can be the sauce to make people top-up their accounts once again.
• Crypto-only incoming payments. Whether the user tries to top-up the account, hackers will only accept payments in crypto – no bank transfers or other payment methods. Such an approach completely hides the identity of the company and deprives you of the ability to ask for a refund.
• Claims are too good to be true. Let’s be sane and sober: even in crypto space, there are not many places where you can earn 50-100-200%. Being able to participate in all of them is nearly impossible, as well as it is impossible to insure or hedge all the risks. Even by that reason alone I can tell that the Altredx is a definite scam.

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Altredx site and fell victim to that scam, there are still some steps to take. They will make further scam attempts harder, and also boost the knowledge about that scam among folks.

• Report to Authorities. Your initial action should involve reporting the scam to local authorities responsible for addressing financial fraud. Additionally, reach out to wallet providers and engage with the technical support teams of social networks. This collective effort raises the bar for the scammers’ operations.
• Inform Your Inner Circle. Extend your impact by sharing information about the scam with your close friends. Similar to notifying authorities, this dissemination of details curbs the scammers’ potential to deceive.
• Document the Trail. Assemble a comprehensive record by capturing screenshots and archiving all relevant website-related data. This encompasses the website URL, screenshots of the main page, login interface, end-user license agreement (EULA), account top-up menu, and wallet addresses. These materials offer invaluable leads for authorities in their pursuit of the scammers.
• Explore Refund Possibilities. While cryptocurrency payments may not typically align with traditional bank refund policies, it’s worthwhile to explore potential refund avenues under specific circumstances. Maintain a positive outlook until you secure confirmation of the loss.
• Transform Loss into Insight. Shift your focus from the financial loss to gaining wisdom. Consider your loss as an investment in comprehending the tactics employed by crypto scam sites. Familiarize yourself with their distinctive traits, the methods they employ to entice individuals, and the extravagant pledges they make. This knowledge equips you to recognize and avoid future traps, minimizing the risk of enduring further financial setbacks.

Scan your system for possible malware infections

Beware of cross scams! Scam actors can use your trust to make you download some stuff or interact with certain documents. It may be a trap that installs malware to your system. There are no moral barriers or limits for these scoundrels.

Throughout the timeline of the scam, its masters may contact you with specific files. Alternatively, they may offer you to set up “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to streamline access to your cryptocurrency savings. As we previously figured out, these scammers have no intention of giving back your funds. So, what can these emails and browser extensions represent? Correct – this is another component of the scam designed to throw you into willingly running harmful software onto your device.

Both add-ons and files included to email messages can function as a carrier for different malicious software. In this case, I foresee the presence of spyware and stealers among other forms of malicious programs. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the likelihood is always significant. As stated, their conscience is of little concern, and their dignity is already neck deep in mud. They have no scruples to lose and intend to maximize revenues.

Frequently asked questions