My interview with a crypto scammer…

If you’ve followed my Friday Crypto Crime posts for a while then you’ll have read my breakdown of how the fake rigged crypto casino scam works, what instagram scammers are doing in the crypto space (and even my hunt for the mysterious scammer “Sharon”), how Telegram crypto charge-back shopping scams work, what a typical fake crypto investment scheme looks and operates like, how Tron mining scams work, and, in my recent piece, how a Russia scam factory operates to con victims from hundreds of thousands of pounds.

In all of my explorations and interactions with scammers I’m seeking to find out how they operate so I can detail it and warn others in the crypto community but also try to ask “why” to the scammers.

It’s a common misconception that scammers are just evil, nefarious actors who derive pleasure from the misery they inflict on those they steal from. It’s much more nuanced than this. Some are driven to a life of scamming through necessity to feed and clothe their families, others are pulled into a life of illicit activity against their will — often victims of modern day slavery and coercion through threat, and of course there are also those who are driven simply by greed — and we’ve seen examples, big and small, of this across the crypto industry.

Until recently, all the scammers I tried to talk to simply blocked me as soon as they found out that I wasn’t a possible victim, however recently a scammer who tried to do an impersonation scam on me via Twitter agreed to be interviewed!

He’s my conversation with him…

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.