We Never See Nothing

I wasn’t too privy to this specific scam before today, and I searched for the website in question but found nothing. The red flags were everywhere the entire time I was going through this, but it initially seemed legitimate enough for people to be easily deceived. Hopefully any potential victims can find this post and save themselves from being scammed.

It all started when I got a message on Discord (https://imgur.com/1fMZ3qS) from a guy (ironically) named “Crooked” telling me I won $69 of bitcoin in a random giveaway. This was the first red flag but I clicked through just to take a look. I went to the site, created an account, and tried to withdraw my 0.008 BTC… https://imgur.com/s1J4D5u I have to gamble some of it away to withdraw it? Second major red flag.

At this point I had nothing to lose so I went ahead and bet the minimum of $15 on the roulette. When the timer hit 0, I was greeted with this: https://imgur.com/xtXt80t. I won $2k in bitcoin!? Yeah, obviously this is too good to be true, but in the moment I just blinked at the screen. There’s a “live” chat with the gamblers chatting away, so I asked if I really just won. Some of them quickly answered me with the affirmative. It all looked pretty convincing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these are paid actors or even AI chatbots.

Then I tried to withdraw again, but I got a message telling me I need to talk to support to activate a “bot app”. So I do, and support linked me to a chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/a%D1%80%D1%80-cr%D1%83%D1%80t%D0%BE/bhihlepfeofebhiafmidfeipambijdgl. I need to install it and log into coinbase / binance / etc to “verify I’m not a bot or money launderer.” I read the reviews on the extension and it’s glaringly obvious. The extension steals the login info of the wallet and the scammers empty it out. At this point I was certain this is a scam, but I spun up a VM to install it so I can get to the bottom of this.

Sure enough, another attempt to withdraw was met with failure, and further talk with the support rep informed me that I need to have at least $500 of bitcoin in my online wallet in order to be verified. After all these red flags, I’d have to be an idiot to go through with that, so I finally called them out on it. Alas, the rep promptly disconnected from the live chat and banned me from the gambling chat for good measure.

I know enough about scams to not fall for stuff like this, but I can totally see how people can. There’s some techniques used in order quell the doubts that pop up while going through the hoops. There’s the low initial giveaway (>$100 seems believable), the rush of gambling (ESPECIALLY for people who are prone to these addictive behaviors) and “winning” $2k in realtime. This all reminds me of the old “sign up for x to unlock free y” scams that were all over the internet a decade ago, but a lot more nuanced and sophisticated. There’s probably dozens, if not hundreds of these sites out there, but I feel the more info is out there the less people will end up falling for it.

TL;DR: If you get a message on Discord saying you won a small amount of bitcoin, ignore it. It’s a scam.