Investigating Beastchange: Legit or Scam? The Truth Revealed

Recently, Beastchange.shop site surfaced, promoting itself as a place where you can securely keep cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather credible evidence that clearly confirms it is, in truth, a fraudulent site.

Despite the promises of the most easy, reliable, and client-friendly service, Beastchange.shop does not fulfill any of them. In fact, all this is just a golden wrap around a clear scam, which takes your funds and never returns them. Any tales about bonuses, backing from celebrities etc are absent as well.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

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Beastchange Scam Overview

Originally, Beastchange poses as a crypto trading & cryptowallet service with remarkably low commission fees. Another notable marketing point for this service is backing from celebrities that are known as crypto activists. Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Vitalii Buterin, Jeff Bezos – the site claims having significant support from them. To make these claims look more realistic, con actors employ AI-generated videos with those celebs promote the fraud as if it was 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 an obvious scam.

Beastchange Scam

Initially, Beastchange shares the layout of many similar websites. There are quite a few examples, like Digitalcrpt, Navdivio or Upbeastok. They are completely indistinguishable in terms of visual elements, with slight discrepancies in the website header. Other details, and at times even crypto wallet addresses, are unchanged. Presumably, all these scam sites are managed by a single team of fraudsters.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Beastchange Scam Works?

Beastchange is a part of a significant cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating vividly in 2023. Rascals who stand behind it use various website designs, which still share the similar overall layout. Another shared 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 complex 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 start the scam, criminals create and fill accounts on well-liked social media platforms. They mainly focus on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the marketing campaign starts. Employing bots and paid promotions (when achievable), fraud actors increase the presence of their deceptive activities to potential victims. And as I said, scammers do not shy away using deepfake for creating clips with the mentioned celebs that promote their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, swindlers claim the bonus for every user who enrolls the service immediately.

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

Users get an incentive to enroll, enticed by the assurance of obtaining crypto rewards valued at thousands of dollars, all free of charge. To enhance the attractiveness of the offer, false claims of sponsorship by a celebrity are added. As you may guess, these assertions are entirely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

After following the promos, targets end up on a page filled with appealing offers. “Crypto starts with Beastchange”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Beastchange, “Start earning with Beastchange – they look rather credible. To heat up users and make them proceed to step 3, scammers say that getting the promoted bonus requires registration. And as nothing questionable happens at this point, uninformed users happily move on – especially since the reward appears to be right behind the corner.

This is the last stage when it is possible to get away from the scam without any losses. Before you sign up using your personal information, swindrels will not earn even a nickel from your presence on the website.

Step 3: Data Gathering

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

As it turns out, the claimed bonus is not available to use right away. To make at least crypto purchases on the platform with it, you need to top up the account with the sum of a bonus. At this point, the final stage of the scam begins.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Eventually, any cryptocurrency purchases require having money on your account. In the case of Beastchange, users are also coerced to top up to claim the bonuses. And these top ups is what creates most of the cash flow to this fraudulent site. By topping up the account, users hope to get the pledged gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start trading on this site hoping to use all the deposited funds and withdraw them.

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

Step 5: Escaping from Funds Withdrawal

Needless to say that swindlers have no intentions to give your money back. But to make it look more realistic, they’ve made up a whole pack of reasons to decline the wireout request. Most of them repeat what KYC guidelines say, but in this case they are here exclusively to make the withdrawal impossible.

By asking for your personal info, scammers just stall hoping for you to accept the loss and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are a dozen other checks you would desperately need to undergo before getting your grand back. And every check will reveal more and more information, which – you guessed it right – will be then marketed 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 Beastchange.shop. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

• Absent company details. Beastchange 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 Beastchange 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 Beastchange, 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 Beastchange is a definite scam.

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Beastchange 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 duration of the fraud, rascals may contact you with specific documents. Alternatively, they may propose you to set up “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to streamline access to your cryptocurrency funds. As we already figured out, these scoundrels have no plan of restoring your money. So, what can these emails and browser plugins represent? You guessed – that is another component of the deceptive plan designed to throw you into deliberately running harmful programs onto your computer.

Both add-ons and files added to emails can function as a carrier for different malicious software. In this scenario, I anticipate the presence of spyware and stealers among all kinds of threats. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the likelihood is always existent. As stated, their morality is of negligible importance, and their dignity is already neck deep in mud. They have no scruples to lose and strive to boost revenues.

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