We Investigated Grembit: Legit or Scam? The Facts

Recently, Grembit.com website surfaced, promoting itself as a platform where you can safely store cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather reliable evidence that unmistakably indicates it is, actually, a deceptive service.

Despite the promises of the most easy, reliable, and client-friendly service, Grembit.com does not fulfill any of them. All this is just a golden wrap around a dirty scam, which takes your money and never gives them back. Any tales about gifts, backing from celebrities etc are nowhere to be found as well.

Grembit Scam Overview

Originally, Grembit poses as a cryptocurrency trading & cryptowallet service with exceptionally low commission fees. Another notable selling point for this platform 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 real, con actors use AI-generated videos with those celebs promote the fake crypto service as the best thing in the world. For known reasons, Elon Musk is the most common among them. But, as I said in the introduction, all this is just a glaring wrap around an obvious scam.

Grembit Scam

First and foremost, Grembit copies the layout of multiple similar pages. There are quite a few examples, like Coinhobo, Cputron or Vegdex. They are completely indistinguishable in terms of visual elements, with minor discrepancies in the webpage header. Other specific elements, and at times even crypto wallet addresses, are matching. Most likely, all these scam online platforms are managed by the same team of scoundrels.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Grembit Scam Works?

Grembit is a part of a extensive cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating actively in 2023. Scammers who stand behind it use various website designs, which still share the identical 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 authenticity of the website. But let’s review them one by one.

Step 1: Promotion

To begin the fraud, criminals set up and fill accounts on well-liked social media platforms. They primarily focus on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the promotional campaign starts. Using bots and sponsored advertisements (when possible), fraud actors increase the exposure of their scam activities to possible victims. And as I said, fraudsters do not disdain using generative AI for creating clips with the aforementioned celebs that promote their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, deceivers claim the bonus for every user who joins the service immediately.

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

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

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

At this point, it is possible to skip the scam without any losses. Before you sign up using your personal data, rascals will not be able to 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 signing up to get bonuses. And all the personal data needed for it – email, username, 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, you cannot use the claimed bonus right away. To make at least crypto 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

It is obvious that any crypto operations require having money on your account. With Grembit, users are also coerced to top up to get 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 committed gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start trading on this site hoping to use all the credited capital and withdraw them.

This, however, is where the victim notices the issues. When keeping an eye on the real cryptocurrency wallet vs what the website says, you can notice that no transactions are done whatsoever. And then, when you’d try to retrieve the money from your account, the scam is finally uncovered to the user.

Step 5: Escaping from Funds Withdrawal

There’s no need to explain that scoundrels are naught on intentions to send you money. But to make the denial look more legitimate, they’ve crafted a whole pack of reasons to decline the wireout request. Most of them repeat what Know Your Client regulations say, but for the Grembit.com they are here exclusively to make the wireout impossible.

By asking for your personal data, frauds just stall hoping for you to understand that you’ve been scammed and stop contacting them. If you don’t – well, there are numerous other checks you would desperately need to undergo before getting your grand back. And each of these checks will share more and more info of yours, 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 Grembit.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Grembit 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 timeline of the fraud, fraudsters may get in touch with you with specific documents. Alternatively, they may suggest you to set up “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to streamline access to your cryptocurrency assets. As we already determined, these scammers have no plan of restoring your funds. So, what can these messages and browser plugins represent? You guessed – this is another side of the fraudulent scheme designed to throw you into willingly installing malicious applications onto your device.

Both add-ons and attachments included to emails can function as a carrier for diverse malicious code. In this case, I anticipate the presence of spyware and stealers among other forms of threats. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the chance is always existent. As stated, their ethics is of no concern, and their reputation is already severely tarnished. They have no principles to give up and aim to boost gains.

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