Investigating Venarux: Legit or Scam? The Truth Exposed

Recently, Venarux.com site popped up, promoting itself as a platform where you can safely store cryptocurrency and other assets. I managed to gather reliable supporting information that clearly confirms it is, actually, a scam site.

Regardless of the promises of the most user-friendly, dependable, and customer-centric service, Venarux.com does not offer any of them. All this is just a gilded wrap around a blatant scam, which steals your money and never returns them. Any tales about gifts, sponsorship from celebrities etc are nowhere to be found as well.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

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Venarux Scam Overview

Originally, Venarux poses as a crypto trading & cryptowallet service with exceptionally low commission fees. Another notable selling point for this service is backing from celebrities that are known in the crypto world. 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 real, frauds employ AI-generated videos with those celebs promote the scam as if it was 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 vivid wrap around an obvious scam.

Venarux Scam

Initially, Venarux repeats the appearance of many equivalent online platforms. There are quite a few examples, like Nydeu, Nobison or Cryptoxforge. They are totally undistinguishable in terms of graphic elements, with slight discrepancies in the webpage header. Other particulars, and sometimes even crypto wallet addresses, are the same. Presumably, all these fraudulent online platforms are operated by a single group of scammers.

Cryptocurrency Scam Summary

How the Venarux Scam Works?

Venarux is a part of a significant cryptocurrency scam scheme that started circulating actively in 2023. Rascals who stand behind it use various website designs, which still share the identical 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 initiate the fraud, criminals set up and fill accounts on popular social media platforms. They generally aim at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Subsequently, the promotional campaign starts. Utilizing bots and paid promotions (when feasible), fraud actors intensify the visibility of their deceptive activities to possible victims. And as I said, scammers do not shy away using generative AI for creating videos with the aforementioned celebs that advertise their scam to the public. To boost the folks even more, frauds claim the bonus for every user who enrolls the service immediately.

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

Users receive a stimulus to enroll, drawn by the promise of obtaining cryptocurrency prizes valued at thousands of dollars, all without cost. To enhance the attractiveness of the offer, fake claims of cooperation with a celebrity are added. As you may guess, these assertions are completely baseless.

Step 2: Gaining Traffic

Upon following the promotions, users end up on a page filled with appealing offers. “Crypto starts with Venarux”, “Your crypto savings are secured with Venarux, “Start earning with Venarux – they look rather reliable. To heat up users and make them proceed to step 3, scammers say that unlocking the pledged bonus requires registration. And since nothing questionable happens at this point, unaware users happily proceed – especially as the bonus appears to be right behind the corner.

At this point, it is possible to steer away from the scam without any losses. Before you register using your personal data, swindrels 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 said, frauds 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 information and selling it further into the Darknet, swindlers can earn quite a penny. Still, 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 sum of a bonus. And this is what initiates the final stage of the scam.

Step 4: Requesting funds

Obviously, any cryptocurrency purchases require having capital on your account. In the case of Venarux, users are also forced to top up to get the bonuses. And these top ups is what creates the majority of the money flow to this fraudulent site. By topping up the account, users hope to get the promised gift (usually $500-1000 in USDT), and may start engaging on this site hoping to use all the transferred funds and withdraw them.

This is where the victim notices the problems. When keeping an eye on the real crypto wallet vs what the website says, you can spot that no transactions are done whatsoever. And then, when you’d try to pull out the funds 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 return your money. Though to make the fraud look more legitimate, they’ve crafted a whole bunch of reasons to decline the transfer-out request. Usually, they repeat what KYC guidelines say, but in this case they are here only 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 multiple other checks you should go through before getting your funds back. And each of these checks will reveal 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 Venarux.com. Actually, there are a lot of scams that fall under the same points, so they are pretty much universal.

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

What Should I do as a Victim?

If you had to deal with Venarux 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 scam, fraudsters may get in touch with you with specific files. Alternatively, they may propose you to set up “cryptocurrency wallet applications” or “browser extensions” to simplify access to your cryptocurrency savings. As we already determined, these rascals have no plan of giving back your money. So, what can these messages and browser add-ons represent? Correct – this is another element of the scam designed to throw you into deliberately installing destructive software onto your system.

Both add-ons and files added to email messages can function as a shell for different malicious software. In this case, I anticipate the presence of spyware and stealers among other kinds of malware. While it is not mandatory for scammers to distribute malware, the probability is always above zero. As noted, their conscience is of little concern, and their dignity is already severely tarnished. They have nothing to give up and intend to maximize revenues.

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