Finally, remember that romance scams are alive and well in the world of cryptocurrency. These scammers can spend months getting you to build up romantic feelings for them, at which point they ask for crypto payments or lure you into investing crypto with them so you can spend your lives together. With this type of scam, someone pretends to become your love interest online, usually by weaving an intricate web of lies about themselves. At the end though, the romantic encounter was always fake, and the person on the other end of the line wasn’t who they said they were.

Other times, they’ll say they’re from a large company like Amazon, Microsoft, FedEx or even your bank in order to convince you of some other storyline. In the end though, the goal is getting your crypto no matter which lies they use. The FTC says that, in this scam, an “investment manager” you have never heard of reaches out to you with an incredible investment opportunity. Of course, the process starts with you sending crypto to their online account or downloading an app that will help you get rich, and you need to do it in a hurry.

Crypto Currency Trader

Many scammers pose as celebrities or influencers in order to lure in new victims who don’t know better, and it can be hard to determine what’s actually real. As an example, crypto scammers constantly try to impersonate Elon Musk over social media and video in order to get people to send in digital assets. An Elon Musk “Freedom Giveaway” crypto scam that took place on Twitter even promised free crypto to the first 1,000 new followers who signed up, but the whole thing was a sham.

You should try to ignore messages from people you don’t know, and only reply if you can verify the person and situation is legitimate. There are legitimate ways to invest in crypto and other investments, but scammers always use high-pressure techniques to get you to invest before you have time to do any research. If you get phone calls or emails from your bank or another institution you actually use, don’t reply to the email or phone number you were contacted from. After all, the initial contact could be fake. Instead of replying directly, look up the company’s contact information on their official website, and call or email them back there.