With crypto going mainstream, there are a lot of scams popping out. While buying certain shitcoins can turn out to be a bad investment, there’s a big difference between a bad investment and an outright scam. In this article I will outline the best way you can spot a cryptocurrency scam and how to go about reporting it to authorities.
We will use an example of a current scam in operation by the name of Huh Token, and show you how to identify and report such a project.
How to Identify a Scam
The number one giveaway for any scams is the fact that you can’t find a contract address on their website or anywhere else. In our example, if you look at the Huh Token official website, you will notice that there’s no contract address that one can independently verify on Etherscan or Bscscan.
If there’s no contract address and the project is asking you to send them money in exchange for tokens, know that it’s a scam and you will never get any tokens back.
Moreover, the fact that a project doesn’t have a contract address speaks to the scammers lack of technical knowledge. After all, it’s not surprising that the scammers don’t know how to launch a smart contract on Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain.
How to Report a Scam?
If you realized that you have been a victim of a scam, while there’s no chances of you getting your money back, if you’re in the US the best option is to submit a report with three separate agencies:
- the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov
- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) at CFTC.gov/complaint
- the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at sec.gov/tcr
When reporting the scam on ftc.gov, you want to select the investment option, followed by cryptocurrency.
The prompts are extremely helpful on FTC.gov and once you fill in all the fields you can submit the report.
Moreover, not only are the government agencies looking to enforce cryptocurrency scams, but they have an active whistleblower program that can give you rewards for reporting and identifying scams.
While reporting the scam isn’t going to get you your money back, at least you can sleep well knowing that you did all you could to hold the scammers accountable for their actions.
If enough reports surface about a particular scam, government agencies can launch a full scale investigation and easily identify the scammers.
It’s unfortunate that the crypto space is plagued with low IQ individuals who are looking to take advantage of unsuspecting investors. However, if we all do our part in identifying and exposing these scams, we will all benefit from a cleaner ecosystem.
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