We Looked at the Evidence: Is Skillbyten Legit or Scam?

Recently, Skillbyten.top website appeared, promoting itself as a platform where you can securely store cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather reliable proof that clearly reveals it is, actually, a fraudulent service.

Regardless of the promises of the most easy, trustworthy, and client-friendly service, Skillbyten.top does not offer any of them. All this is just a shiny wrap around a blatant scam, which takes your money and never returns them. Any stories about gifts, backing from celebrities etc are non-existent as well.

Skillbyten Scam Overview

Originally, Skillbyten poses as a crypto trading & cryptowallet service with remarkably low commission fees. Another bright marketing point for this platform is partnerships with celebrities that have relation to the crypto world. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Vitalii Buterin, Warren Buffet – the site claims having significant support from them. To make these claims look real, frauds employ deepfake videos where those celebrities promote the fake crypto service as if it was 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 vivid wrap around an obvious scam.

Skillbyten Scam

First and foremost, Skillbyten shares the layout of multiple similar pages. There are quite a few examples, like Crypteq, Coingrailed or Coinerflow. They are completely indistinguishable in terms of graphic elements, with minor discrepancies in the site header. Other specific elements, and sometimes even crypto wallet addresses, are the same. Presumably, all these fraudulent sites are led by a single gang of frauds.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Skillbyten Scam Works?

Skillbyten is a part of a large cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating vividly 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 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 start the fraud, criminals set up and fill accounts on well-liked social media platforms. They generally target Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the advertising campaign starts. Utilizing bots and sponsored promotions (when feasible), scam actors boost the presence of their scam activities to potential victims. And as I said, scammers do not shy away using deepfake for creating videos with the mentioned celebrities that advertise their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, swindlers claim the bonus for every user who joins the service immediately.

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

Users obtain an encouragement to sign up, attracted by the promise of receiving cryptocurrency benefits valued at thousands of dollars, all without cost. To increase the attractiveness of the offer, false claims of sponsorship by a celebrity are incorporated. As you may guess, these assertions are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

Upon clicking the promotions, victims end up on a page filled with attractive offers. “Crypto starts with Skillbyten”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Skillbyten, “Start earning with Skillbyten – they look rather authoritative. To heat up the interest and make the users proceed to step 3, scammers say that obtaining the promised bonus requires registration. And as nothing concerning happens at this point, uninformed users happily proceed – especially since the gift 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, crooks will not be able to 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 said, deceivers bait folks for registration with bonuses. And all the personal info needed for it – username, email, crypto wallet address – are valuable for user identification. Exclusively by gathering this info and selling it further into the Darknet, fraudsters can earn quite a penny. Nonetheless, their plans go much further.

As it turns out, the alleged bonus is not available to use right away. To make at least cryptocurrency purchases on the platform with it, you need to top up the account with the equivalent sum. And this is what starts the final stage of the scam.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Eventually, any crypto operations require having capital on your account. In the case of Skillbyten, users are also coerced to top up to use the bonuses. And these top ups is what creates the majority of the money 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 trading on this website hoping to use all the transferred money and withdraw them.

This, however, is where the victim notices the issues. When comparing the actual crypto wallet vs what the site says, you can spot 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 swindlers have 0 intentions to give your money back. Though to make the denial look more realistic, they’ve crafted a whole bunch of reasons to decline the withdrawal request. Usually, they repeat what KYC regulations say, but in this case they are here exclusively to make the withdrawal impossible.

By asking for your personal info, frauds 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 grand back. And each of these checks will uncover 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 Skillbyten.top. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Skillbyten 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, scoundrels may get in touch with you with particular documents. Alternatively, they may offer you to install “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to simplify access to your cryptocurrency assets. As we previously determined, these scoundrels have no plan of returning your money. So, what can these messages and browser extensions represent? Correct – that is another component of the deceptive plan designed to entice you into willingly running destructive programs onto your device.

Both add-ons and files attached to email messages can act as a carrier for diverse malicious software. In this scenario, I anticipate the presence of spyware and stealers among other types of threats. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the chance is always existent. As stated, their morality is of little concern, and their dignity is already severely tarnished. They have nothing to lose and intend to boost profits.

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