Investigating Citzns: Legit or Scam? The Truth Exposed

Recently, Citzns.com service appeared, promoting itself as a platform where you can securely keep cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather credible supporting information that unmistakably confirms it is, in fact, a scam service.

Regardless of the promises of the most user-friendly, dependable, and customer-centric service, Citzns.com does not follow any of them. All this is just a golden wrap around a dirty scam, which steals your money and never returns them. Any stories about gifts, sponsorship from celebrities etc are absent as well.

Citzns Scam Overview

Originally, Citzns poses as a cryptocurrency trading & cryptowallet platform with remarkably low commission fees. Another highlighted marketing point for this platform is partnerships with celebrities that have relation to the crypto world. Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Vitalii Buterin, Jeff Bezos – the site says about being supported by them. To make these claims look real, con actors employ deepfake videos with those celebs advertise the fake crypto service as the best thing in the world. For known reasons, Elon Musk is the most common choise for that. But, as I said in the introduction, all this is just a glaring wrap around an obvious scam.

Citzns Scam

To begin with, Citzns repeats the layout of many equivalent websites. There are quite a few examples, like Dttsc, Selunox or Sawerex. They are totally indistinguishable in terms of visual elements, with small discrepancies in the webpage header. Other particulars, and at times even crypto wallet addresses, are matching. Most likely, all these scam online platforms are led by the same team of scammers.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Citzns Scam Works?

Citzns is a part of a extensive cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating actively in 2023. Scammers who stand behind it use several website designs, which still share the same overall layout. Another mutual 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 set up and fill accounts on well-liked social media platforms. They mainly aim at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the advertising campaign commences. Utilizing bots and paid ads (when possible), fraud actors boost the presence of their deceptive activities to possible victims. And as I said, fraudsters do not shy away using generative AI for creating videos with the mentioned celebrities that advertise their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, deceivers claim the bonus for every user who registers the service immediately.

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

Users get an encouragement to sign up, drawn by the commitment of receiving crypto benefits valued at hundreds of dollars, all for free. To increase the attractiveness of the offer, fake suggestions of cooperation with a celebrity are added. As you may guess, these claims are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

Upon following the promos, targets end up on a page filled with enticing offers. “Crypto starts with Citzns”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Citzns, “Start earning with Citzns – they look rather authoritative. To heat up the interest and make the users proceed to step 3, scammers say that claiming the promoted bonus requires registration. And since nothing suspicious happens at this point, unexperienced users happily keep on – especially as the bonus 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, rascals will not earn even a nickel from your presence on the website.

Step 3: Data Gathering

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

As it turns out, you cannot use the claimed bonus right away. To make it at least usable for crypto purchases, you need to top up the account with the equivalent sum. At this point, the final stage of the scam begins.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Eventually, any crypto operations require having capital on your account. In the case of Citzns, users are also compelled to top up to claim the bonuses. And this is what creates most of the cash flow to this scam website. By topping up the account, users hope to get the promised gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start participating on this site hoping to use all the deposited money and withdraw them.

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

Step 5: Escaping from Funds Withdrawal

There’s no need to explain that fraudsters have no intentions to send you money. But to make it look more legitimate, they’ve elaborated a whole pack of reasons to decline the withdrawal request. Usually, they repeat what Know Your Client regulations say, but for the Citzns.com they are here only to make the wireout impossible.

By requesting your personal info, frauds just stall hoping for you to understand that you’ve been scammed and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are a dozen other checks you would desperately need to undergo before getting your funds back. And every check will uncover more and more information, which – you guessed it right – will be then sold 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 Citzns.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Citzns 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 the scam to authorities. Search for local authorities responsible for financial frauds, and also notify wallet providers and social networks via their tech support. It is essential to make the further operations of these scammers much harder.
• Tell your close friends. That step is similar to reporting to the authorities, and has similar effects. By posting info about scam crypto service, you decrease the pool of people they can fool.
• Get evidence. Screenshot or save all the information related to the website. URL, screenshot of a main page, login window, EULA, account top-up menu, wallet addresses – all these things may be useful for authorities to find the scammers.
• Check whether you can ask for a refund. As I’ve said above, crypto payments do not fall under refund policies in most banks. Nonetheless, in some circumstances, it is still possible. Never lose hope until you actually confirm it is gone.
• Make your mistake your lesson. Financial losses are always a reason for frustration, but let’s imagine it was a pay for scam revealing courses. Remember the key features of these crypto scam sites, the way they attract people and what they promise. In the future, you will easily recognize a trap of spending no money.

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 course of the scam, rascals may get in touch with you with specific files. Alternatively, they may offer you to install “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to facilitate access to your cryptocurrency assets. As we previously determined, these deceivers have no plan of restoring your capital. So, what do these emails and browser extensions represent? You guessed – this is another component of the deceptive plan designed to entice you into deliberately installing destructive applications onto your system.

Both plugins and attachments added to emails can serve as a shell for diverse malicious code. In this case, I foresee the presence of spyware and stealers among other types of threats. While it is not obligatory for scammers to distribute malware, the chance is always significant. As previously mentioned, their morality is of no concern, and their reputation is already neck deep in mud. They have nothing to give up and strive to boost profits.

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