2nd September 2022 > > Scam alert.

tl;dr

I do love to wind-up the scammers.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

The introduction of quantitative easing dramatically increased the correlation between all asset classes, and especially of bonds and equities.

The removal of this market manipulation on the grandest scale ever, has further reinforced this correlation.

Traditional portfolio managers can no longer hide behind their failing model assumptions and must now start to earn their fees rather than just pressing F9.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Scam alert

I know I know. There are so many of them.

But I did enjoy this one, which all began with this unsolicited email:

I do enjoy a good wind-up, so I navigated over to coincrow.net.

*** Do not do this on a PC as the website is infected with a phishing virus ***

This website asks for crypto deposits on which they claim to pay you interest. I mean seriously? Does anyone fall for that obvious scam?

At the bottom of the webpage a further claim is made to be sponsored by RiverFort Global Capital Ltd, a real investment firm. Upon enquiry, their investor relations team has stated explicitly to me that they have no association with coincrow and use of their name in that context is fraudulent.

…

But that wasn’t enough for me.

I input the customer id and password from the email and was asked by the website to reset the password using OTP via text that required my phone number.

Conveniently, and deliberately, I have a burner phone for situations just like this.

I immediately received an incoming call to confirm my change of password.

I was informed that I would be able to access and withdraw the 42.136 BTC, currently worth around $840k after making a payment of $1,500 as a release fee.

Playing along with them, I pretended to be in the process of making the transfer but pausing at the point where I was about to pretend to press the non-existent payment button, I asked how I could be sure they were legit.

After much discussion, I informed them that if they sent me $100 then I would immediately send them $1,500 to withdraw “my” BTC.

Click, burr …