One of the things I hate most about being part of the crypto world is hearing again and again how many scams are in this space and how everyone needs to be extremely careful. This fear drives people away and reduces the potential of legitimate and revolutionary projects.
The only thing worse than the spread of this fear is the fact that it's true, and we have a front row seat to witness these scams right in front of our eyes. Luckily, it appears with this recent scam, tens of thousands of cryptocurrency supporters and advocates only lost trust, time, and hope, instead of their hard-earned money in what was a clever and devious scam from the "team" behind a fake project called CORBIT.
Before getting into why and how this was the perfect ICO airdrop scam, I want to thank @frontcypto, who brought awareness to this scam and is raising awareness on Twitter to help those who were conned take appropriate action. But there is still much work to be done to raise awareness of this scam.
The Perfect ICO Airdrop Scam
Looking through a long list of potential airdrops to join last week, one stood out above the rest. It was a new decentralized exchange with low fees that pays coinholders a percentage of the fees paid by traders, similar to KuCoin, making this project extremely attractive to early adopters. For signing up for their Telegram and Twitter channels, participants would receive 30 coins after the end of their ICO, worth around $6, which may not sound like much, but it's a solid exchange of value for such an easy airdrop.
The project and airdrop seemed feasible and attractive, and over 80,000 people joined the CORBIT community in less than a week. I even added the project to my "airdrops of the week" article, encouraging others to sign up (I'm sorry!). I was excited and even looked into the possibility of purchasing coins shortly after their ICO.
Days later, I noticed I was receiving Telegram and Twitter updates from an account I didn't remember ever following.
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Overnight, the entire CORBIT brand disappeared, including their website, and in its place was AirdropKing.io. In their Telegram Channel, there was a pinned message saying that the channel has officially rebranded to AirdropKing.io without any mention of the once exciting ICO Corbit that had recruited the support of over 80,000 people with the promise of a few free coins.
The team behind this project pulled off the perfect scam. Their followers, myself included until this morning, are mostly unaware of the switch, as every participant has obviously entered and is interested in airdrops. This team spent time creating the ultimate scam by posing as an actual ICO with intentions of giving away millions of dollars worth of their cryptocurrency and it worked...at least is has so far.
Warning signs were there with an unfinished whitepaper and no mention of the team, but they weren't asking for money, they were just asking for support on social media, which helped them quickly gain exactly what they were looking for.
One of the boldest aspects of this CORBIT scam is that AirdropKing.io is even tweeting about what airdrops are real and fake. I couldn't help myself but comment on their most recent post.
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Please join me in spreading the word of this scam and warning people not to follow and support this account that manipulated tens of thousands of people in order to build up a social media following that thought they were signing up for something else. For cryptocurrency to grow, we must get rid of the trash, and this is certainly trash stinking up what otherwise is a very exciting and promising new world.
It is a shame that so many scams exist in the world off crypto, totally agree! Even worse it is for the people suffering from these scams. Hard for new people to know what to put their trust to, and one can easily be fooled, specially if you are new to the cryptocurrencies.
I see you are doing great on the platform @michaelucchies, you've come far. And you are providing some good content! keep it up my friend :D
Yeah, well said. If they would put this much effort into a legitimate effort we would all be better for it.
Thanks! You too!
Thanks for the heads up on airdropking. I hadn't heard of their scam until now, but I will definitely avoid them like the plague that they are.
Good, yes! So awful.
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Thank you for the article!.. I joned Corbit airdrop too.. And now I understand what it was.
No problem! I was really confused until I found out what happened.
Huh? What about that? I knew there was something shady when I checked my bookmarks and Corbit was missing, and when my TL showed an airdrop account.
Yup, we got screwed!
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