How to spot crypto scams before they cost you

How most scams work

Crypto payments are final and need no bank’s approval, which makes them attractive to fraudsters. However elaborate the story, it almost always ends with you doing something only you can do: sending coins, signing a transaction or message, or revealing your seed phrase. Knowing where the story is heading makes it much easier to see it coming.

The common patterns

• Fake investment platforms. Someone you met online, often through a dating app, social network or “wrong number” message, introduces you to a trading site that shows impressive gains. Small withdrawals work at first. When you try to take out more, you are told to pay a “tax” or “release fee”, and the money never comes back. The site was never trading.
• Impersonation. Fake support staff, exchange “security teams”, celebrities and project founders. Real support never contacts you first on social media or chat, and never needs your seed phrase or remote access to your computer.
• Giveaways. Send some crypto and get twice as much back, often in a livestream using a famous person’s face or a cloned voice. Nobody gives away money this way.
• Phishing sites and fake apps. Copies of wallet, exchange and app sites, reached through adverts and messages, that ask for your seed phrase or for a signature that hands over your tokens.
• Wallet drainers. A site asks you to sign what looks like a login or a claim, but the signature lets someone else move your tokens. See token approvals.
• Address poisoning. Look-alike addresses planted in your history, waiting to be copied. See the guide.
• Fake tokens and rug pulls. Tokens that imitate real ones, or new tokens whose creators can mint more, block selling or empty the trading pool.
• Recovery scams. After a loss, “recovery experts” or fake law firms promise to trace and return your funds for an upfront fee. They target people who have already been robbed.

Signs to stop and check

• You were contacted first, especially by a stranger or a “wrong number” who became friendly.
• Returns are guaranteed, or unusually high and suspiciously steady.
• There is pressure to act now: a countdown, an expiring bonus, a threat that your account will be closed.
• You are asked to move the conversation or the money to a new app, website or platform.
• Getting your money out requires paying something first.
• Anyone asks for your seed phrase, a remote-access app or a screen share.

Check an address before you send

These checks take a minute and need no account.

1. Look up the address in the address checker. A brand-new address, labels such as scam or phishing, flags from block explorers, or funds flowing straight to mixers are all reasons to stop. The report shows the evidence behind every point of its risk score.
2. Screen it with the sanctions check, which tells you whether the address is on the US Treasury’s OFAC list. “No match” only means the address itself is not listed.
3. Compare it with the address you meant to pay. The address poisoning checker spots look-alikes character by character.
4. Check an ENS name in both directions. The ENS lookup shows the address a name points to, and warns you when that address does not claim the name back.

Check a token before you buy or accept it

1. Take the contract address from the project’s official site, never from a message, a search advert or a comment.
2. Paste it into the contract admin inspector. It shows whether the contract can be upgraded and by whom, who owns it, whether that owner is a single key or a multisig, and whether it is paused. A token whose code one person can change can be changed against you.
3. Look the same address up in the address checker for explorer scam flags, its age and who has interacted with it.
4. If an unknown token simply appears in your wallet, leave it alone. Unsolicited tokens are often bait for a malicious approval, and some can be bought but never sold.

If it has already happened

1. Stop sending money, including any fee to “release” your funds.
2. If you signed an approval, revoke it. If your seed phrase may have been exposed, move what is left to a new wallet with a new seed phrase.
3. Record the addresses, transaction IDs, website addresses and messages. Our transaction lookup and address reports show where the funds went.
4. Report it to the police and your national fraud reporting service; in the US, that is the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). If the funds reached an exchange, tell the exchange as well, because exchanges can sometimes freeze funds in accounts they control.
5. Ignore anyone who offers to get the money back for a fee.