Industry pro comes face to face with a supposed crypto scammer
Felix Crisan, a Bitcoiner, outwitted a crypto scammer by convincing them to create a Bitcoin Lightning Wallet before putting them in their place.
Scammers being defeated at their own game is poetic justice. When attempting to con Bitcoiner Felix Crisan into paying them Tether, the scammer met their match (USDT).
The con artist pretended to be John Carvalho, the CEO of Synonym, a Bitcoiner who Cointelegraph frequently mentions. The fraudster, who we’ll refer to as “Fake John” from now on, wanted Crisan to give USDT, but Crisan, who has been learning and using Bitcoin (BTC) for nearly a decade, had other ideas.
In short, Netopia Payments’ chief technical officer, Crisan, persuaded the fraudster to install a Lightning Network (LN) wallet because he only deals with “LN assets,” therefore, Fake John installed Blue Wallet, a Bitcoin LN wallet. Instead of delivering the money to Fake John, Crisan sent him a message that said, “Eat shit, you fucking fraudster!”
All while delivering a free tutorial on how to utilize Bitcoin LN, justice was served.
On the other hand, it raises the question of whether Fake John will continue to swindle people now that they have access to Bitcoin LN addresses.
Built on top of the Bitcoin main chain, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is a rapidly developing near-instant layer-2 payment network. It’s introduced innovations like a quick method to pour a pint, and it’s partnering with Tether to help the aforementioned (actual) John Carvalho establish his company on Lightning.
Scammers, bots, and cryptocurrency shills are frequent on social media sites like Twitter, and malware bots can sometimes interfere with wallet addresses to steal Bitcoin, according to Crisan, who told Cointelegraph that he “constantly get DMs pushing one investment plan or another.”
“If the fraudster built a communication with this node, then it would be doable,” Crisan said of pursuing and maybe apprehending the criminal. However, “only the node operator would be able to undertake this increased tracing,” says the author. “But there are also services that offer a type of on-demand channel creation, so it’s not a very trustworthy way.”
Crisan isn’t new to playing pranks on con artists. In 2019, he deceived a Bitcoin noob into sending 21 million (and one) Bitcoin to their address. The scammer certainly needs to conduct some research because Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins.
When asked whether he had any advice for cryptocurrency and internet users who are constantly being targeted by frauds, Crisan told Cointelegraph:
“Avoiding scams should always begin with establishing a shared history with the requestor — that is, determining if they are who they claim to be — and then requesting a common reference.” (I asked this type of question to this fraudster for the first time yesterday, and his response virtually confirmed that he isn’t John.)”
