Investigating Monelax: Legit or Scam? The Truth Exposed

Recently, Monelax.com site surfaced, promoting itself as a platform where you can securely store cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather reliable supporting information that unmistakably reveals it is, actually, a fraudulent service.

Regardless of the promises of the most convenient, reliable, and client-friendly service, Monelax.com does not offer any of them. In fact, all this is just a gilded wrap around a clear scam, which steals your funds and never gives them back. Any tales about bonuses, endorsement from celebrities etc are absent as well.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

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Monelax Scam Overview

Originally, Monelax poses as a cryptocurrency trading & cryptowallet platform with exceptionally low commission fees. Another notable marketing point for this platform is partnerships with celebrities that are known in 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 promote the scam as 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.

Monelax Scam

First and foremost, Monelax shares the appearance of multiple similar websites. There are quite a few examples, like Nelomia, Soweu or Nasvhr. They are entirely indistinguishable in terms of visual elements, with minor discrepancies in the webpage header. Other particulars, and at times even crypto wallet addresses, are the same. Most likely, all these scam websites are led by the same gang of swindrels.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Monelax Scam Works?

Monelax is a part of a large cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating vividly in 2023. Scammers who stand behind it use several 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 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 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 starts. Using bots and paid advertisements (when possible), fraud actors increase the exposure of their fraudulent activities to possible victims. And as I said, fraudsters do not disdain using generative AI for creating videos with the mentioned celebrities that promote 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 Monelax in TikTok. Most of these videos are AI-generated deepfakes

Users get an encouragement to sign up, drawn by the commitment of obtaining cryptocurrency benefits valued at thousands of dollars, all for free. To enhance the appeal of the offer, false suggestions of cooperation with a celebrity are incorporated. As you may guess, these claims are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

After following the promos, victims end up on a page filled with attractive offers. “Crypto starts with Monelax”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Monelax, “Start earning with Monelax – they look rather credible. To heat up the interest and make the users proceed to step 3, scammers say that retrieving the promoted bonus requires registration. And since nothing suspicious happens at this point, uninformed users happily proceed – especially as 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 register 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 the starting poing of the main fraud action. As I just said, deceivers bait folks into registration for bonuses. And all the personal data needed for it – username, email, cryptocurrency wallet address – is valuable for user identification. Only by gathering this info and selling it further into the Darknet, crooks 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 at least cryptocurrency 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

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

This, however, is where the issues 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 pull out the capital 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 give your money back. But to make it look more legitimate, they’ve developed a whole bunch of reasons to decline the wireout request. Most of them repeat what Know Your Client requirements say, but in this case they are here only to make the withdrawal impossible.

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

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Monelax 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, its masters may reach out to you with specific documents. Alternatively, they may suggest you to deploy “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to facilitate access to your cryptocurrency funds. As we earlier figured out, these scoundrels have no intention of returning your money. So, what do these messages and browser plugins represent? Correct – this is another element of the fraudulent scheme designed to throw you into willingly installing destructive software onto your system.

Both add-ons and files attached to email messages can serve as a shell for different malicious code. In this case, I foresee the presence of spyware and stealers among other forms of malware. While it is not obligatory for scammers to distribute malware, the probability is always significant. As previously mentioned, their ethics is of little concern, and their reputation is already neck deep in mud. They have nothing to give up and aim to boost profits.

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