We Investigated Cryptominingtrade: Legit or Scam? The Facts

Recently, Cryptominingtrade.com site surfaced, promoting itself as a platform where you can securely keep cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather credible evidence that unmistakably confirms it is, actually, a scam platform.

Regardless of the promises of the most convenient, reliable, and customer-centric service, Cryptominingtrade.com does not follow any of them. All this is just a shiny wrap around a clear scam, which steals your money and data and never returns them. Any stories about bonuses, endorsement from celebrities etc are absent as well.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

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Cryptominingtrade Scam Overview

Originally, Cryptominingtrade poses as a crypto trading & cryptowallet platform with exceptionally low commission fees. Another notable marketing point for this site is backing from 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 more realistic, frauds use AI-generated videos where those celebrities promote the scam as the best thing in the world. For obvious 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 a transparent scam.

Cryptominingtrade Scam

First and foremost, Cryptominingtrade repeats the layout of many equivalent pages. There are quite a few examples, like Bitaufy, Wecoinx or Tomexbit. They are completely identical in terms of graphic elements, with small discrepancies in the website header. Other particulars, and sometimes even crypto wallet addresses, are matching. Probably, all these scam sites are led by a single gang of swindrels.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Cryptominingtrade Scam Works?

Cryptominingtrade is a part of a extensive cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating actively in 2023. Rascals who stand behind it use various website designs, which still share the same 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 fraud, criminals establish and fill accounts on popular social media platforms. They generally aim at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the marketing campaign starts. Employing bots and sponsored ads (when achievable), scam actors boost the visibility of their fraudulent activities to potential victims. And as I said, crooks do not disdain using generative AI for creating videos 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 Cryptominingtrade in TikTok. Most of these videos are AI-generated deepfakes

Users get an incentive to register, drawn by the assurance of receiving crypto rewards valued at hundreds of dollars, all without cost. To augment the attractiveness of the offer, fake suggestions of cooperation with a celebrity are incorporated. As you may guess, these assertions are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

After following the ads, targets end up on a page filled with appealing offers. “Crypto starts with Cryptominingtrade”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Cryptominingtrade, “Start earning with Cryptominingtrade – they look rather authoritative. To heat up users and make them proceed to step 3, crooks say that obtaining the promised bonus requires registration. And as nothing suspicious happens at this point, uninformed users happily proceed – especially since the bonus appears to be right behind the corner.

At this point, it is possible to get away from the scam without any losses. Before you sign up using your personal data, swindrels will not be able to earn even a penny 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 info needed for it – email, username, crypto wallet address – are valuable for user identification. Solely by gathering this data and selling it further into the Darknet, swindlers can earn quite a penny. Still, their plans go much further.

As it turns out, you cannot use the promised bonus right away. To make it at least usable for cryptocurrency purchases, you need to top up the account with the sum of a bonus. And this is what initiates the final step of the scam.

Step 4: Requesting funds

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

This, however, is where the first obvious problems start to surface. When comparing the real cryptocurrency wallet vs what the site says, you can spot that no transactions are done whatsoever. And then, when you’d try to withdraw the money 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 return your money. But to make the fraud look more realistic, they’ve developed a whole pack of reasons to decline the wireout request. Usually, they repeat what KYC regulations say, but in this case they are here only to make the withdrawal impossible.

By requesting your personal data, deceivers 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 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 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 Cryptominingtrade.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Cryptominingtrade 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 fraud, its actors may get in touch with you with particular files. Alternatively, they may suggest you to deploy “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to simplify access to your crypto assets. As we earlier determined, these scoundrels have no plan of giving back your funds. So, what do these messages and browser add-ons represent? You guessed – this is another component of the deceptive plan designed to throw you into deliberately running malicious programs onto your device.

Both plugins and files included to emails can act as a carrier for diverse malicious code. In this scenario, I foresee the presence of spyware and stealers among all kinds of malicious programs. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the probability is always greater than zero. As noted, their ethics is of negligible importance, and their reputation is already seriously marred. They have no principles to lose and intend to maximize revenues.

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