I have been victim to a scam. This is hardly news as crypto is riddled with scams, however the methodology used seems very intricate, so I want to break it down so I can hopefully help others avoid falling into the same trap.

Let’s point out all the red flags along the way which of course are oh so easy to see now.

I was invited to a discord channel called Crypto Pump Sharks. In hindsight this is the first red flag, I didn’t join but was invited.

When you learn what it’s about it’s the classic pump and dump scheme, you buy a coin jointly with others, pump it up and then sell it. It seems simple enough and in an obscure exchange it makes sense that a thinly traded coin could be manipulated for everybody’s benefit. They promise a range between 120%-240% profits per pump, which sure sounds too good to be true.

They explain you have to register in the exchange https://intel-trading.com, that the pump wouldn’t work in other exchanges because exchanges are not connected and nor is buy/sell activity and hence prices differ across exchanges. This is true of crypto and also of stocks in different exchanges, so it checks out. Normally arbitrage across exchanges prevents prices from differing too much from one another, but in an obscure exchange where prices only differ for a short time it’s plausible. Then in the FAQ you’re given a slightly less convincing reason why it only works on that exchange but you let it slide.

So you sign up for this obscure exchange https://intel-trading.com/ (please do your research first — note to self) and deposit your bitcoin or ether and then are ready for the pump. You naturally start with a small amount to see if it works out, but boy does it work out!

This was my first pump, and I was surprised at two things (which, of course, in hindsight are clear red flags).

One, you’re told to buy the coin in advance. This doesn’t make sense, because the whole point of a pump scheme is to manipulate the market, and the more buying power you have the more successful you will be at that manipulation. Hence, everyone should buy at the same time. I dismissed it thinking they have very high purchasing power and don’t need other buyers.

Two, the coin traded is TRX, or Tron, which is the 24th largest cryptocurrency and with a market cap of over $6 billion and daily trading of half a billion. It seems odd that you’d be able to manipulate such a big cryptocurrency. This one I dismissed thinking on small exchanges anything is possible.

The pump comes later than the agreed upon time (another red flag, and sloppy on the scammer’s side), but arrives anyway, and sure enough it is a massive success. You are notified when the pump starts and when to sell. I doubled my investment, but only because I sold earlier than the sell signal, as total pump was 175% gain.

After the pump you feel extremely excited because you just made immense profit! Naturally you think to put in more money to do it again. You also notice there are VIP pumps which offer even bigger pumps for deposited amounts of .1 BTC ($3,910 at current prices).

After the second pump (they happen almost daily) you are already over the required .1BTC so you request to join the VIP group showing a screenshot of your balance.

And now comes the biggest red flag of all, which is that I was told that account balance is not enough to join VIP, but instead need to show a DEPOSIT of 0.1BTC. Surely you can withdraw and then re-deposit, so why does it matter?

Only at this point when you start to get suspicious you attempt to withdraw a small amount to make sure everything works. And remember, the withdraw button has been there all along, so even if you didn’t click it you knew it was there. The withdraw screen looks normal and legit (network fee seems high but no big deal).

It’s only when you actually click “withdraw now” you get a most unusual message.

Now of course, Spain is NOT a high-risk county, and .045BTC (or $1,760) is a ridiculously high fee for anything, but even if you agreed to this, there is nowhere to accept! After you read this message one hundred times and decide it doesn’t in fact make any sense, this is where it dawns on you it’s all part of a very intricate scam.

Indeed, the scammers went to the lengths of creating a phoney exchange, with its login page, 2FA, live updates of bids and asks, buy and sell functions, trade history, open and executed trades, etc. all in order to scam you off your initial deposit. Also the prices shown are accurate prices, except the pumps of course.

Once again, in hindsight there were a couple more things which surprised me, such as there were no possibilities for simple limit orders or stop loss. It was only market purchases, which served fine for the purpose, and as it was a small exchange I didn’t think twice about it.

But after the fact, you do some research on the exchange https://intel-trading.com/ and not much at all comes up, but enough to know you have been scammed.

At this point all your previous excitement and emotion turns into disbelief and regret. How could I be so stupid!

The most important learning of all for me is this: I WANTED TO BELIEVE. While I thought it was too good to be true and saw a few things that surprised me (no limit orders, large coins used for pumps, buy in advance), I wanted to believe so unconsciously I made excuses for each of what in hindsight were big red flags.

Bottom line, if it’s too good to be true it probably isn’t.

Update: Shortly after I wrote this I got invited to another group called Amazon group pumps, which directed you to another phoney exchange: https://dotxcex.com/. Another scam. Please please be extremely vigilant!

Update 2: Since I wrote the story the trading site has now changed to https://trade-xbit.com/. Same Discord group, same everything. Beware!