The Felede Scam – Don’t Become the Next Victim

Recently, Felede.com service surfaced, promoting itself as a platform where you can safely store cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather credible supporting information that clearly reveals it is, actually, a fraudulent platform.

Regardless of the promises of the most convenient, dependable, and client-friendly service, Felede.com does not offer any of them. All this is just a gilded wrap around a blatant scam, which takes your money and data and never returns them. Any stories about gifts, endorsement from celebrities etc are absent as well.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

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Felede Scam Overview

Originally, Felede poses as a cryptocurrency trading & cryptowallet platform with exceptionally low commission fees. Another highlighted selling point for this platform is partnerships with celebrities that are known as crypto activists. Vitalii Buterin (Ethereum creator), Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet – the site says about being supported by them. To make these claims look more realistic, con actors employ deepfake videos with those celebs promote the scam as the best thing in the world. For obvious 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.

Felede Scam

To begin with, Felede shares the design of multiple equivalent websites. There are quite a few examples, like Muscoinx, Nexbithub or Bytwax. They are entirely undistinguishable in terms of visual elements, with slight discrepancies in the website header. Other particulars, and sometimes even crypto wallet addresses, are identical. Presumably, all these scam websites are managed by a single gang of fraudsters.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Felede Scam Works?

Felede is a part of a large 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 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 complex psychological tricks that make the user believe in the legitimacy of the website. But let’s review them one by one.

Step 1: Promotion

To begin the scam, criminals establish and fill accounts on popular social media platforms. They generally aim at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the advertising campaign starts. Employing bots and paid advertisements (when achievable), scam actors intensify the presence of their scam activities to potential victims. And as I said, scammers do not disdain using deepfake for creating videos with the aforementioned celebrities that advertise their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, swindlers claim the bonus for every user who registers the service immediately.

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

Users receive a stimulus to register, attracted by the promise of receiving crypto rewards valued at hundreds of dollars, all free of charge. To increase the appeal of the offer, false suggestions of sponsorship by a celebrity are added. As you may guess, these claims are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

After clicking the promos, victims end up on a page filled with appealing offers. “Crypto starts with Felede”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Felede, “Start earning with Felede – they look rather authoritative. To heat up the interest and make the users proceed to step 3, crooks say that unlocking the promoted bonus requires registration. And as nothing suspicious happens at this point, unaware users happily proceed – especially since the bonus appears to be right behind the corner.

This is the last stage when it is possible to skip the scam without any losses. Before you sign up using your personal info, frauds will not 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, scammers bait folks into registration to get bonuses. And all the personal information needed for it – username, email, cryptocurrency wallet address – are valuable for user identification. Solely by gathering this info and selling it further into the Darknet, crooks can earn quite a penny. Nonetheless, their plans go much further.

As it turns out, you cannot use the alleged bonus 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 kicks in.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Eventually, any cryptocurrency purchases require you to have funds on your account. In the case of Felede, users are also coerced to top up to use the bonuses. And this is what creates the majority of the cash flow to this scam website. 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 credited capital and withdraw them.

This is where the victim notices the problems. When keeping an eye on the actual crypto wallet vs what the site says, you can observe 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 fraudsters have zero intentions to return your money. But to make the denial look more legitimate, they’ve crafted a whole pack of reasons to decline the transfer-out request. Usually, they repeat what KYC guidelines say, but for the Felede.com they are here exclusively to make the withdrawal impossible.

By asking for your personal information, frauds just stall hoping for you to accept the loss and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are multiple other checks you would desperately need to undergo before getting your money back. And each of these checks will reveal 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 Felede.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Felede 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 reach out to you with particular documents. Alternatively, they may offer you to deploy “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to simplify access to your crypto assets. As we previously figured out, these scammers have no intention of returning your money. So, what do these emails and browser add-ons represent? Correct – that is another component of the scam designed to throw you into deliberately running malicious software onto your computer.

Both add-ons and attachments added to emails can act as a shell for diverse malicious software. In this case, I expect the presence of spyware and stealers among all types of threats. While it is not obligatory for scammers to distribute malware, the likelihood is always above zero. As previously mentioned, their conscience is of no concern, and their dignity is already deeply compromised. They have nothing to lose and aim to maximize gains.

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