CRYPTO SCAM ALERT: Cryptogro, CBOT, Instagram User (berheecesolozhchenko), LINE User (玲)

Cryptocurrency, NFTs, web3 are gaining awareness and traction, so are cyber crimes, online scams are on the raise!

Noting down a personal encounter to prevent other innocent folks from falling into such unpleasant and unfortunate incident.

The Crypto Exchange website address was https://cryptogroage.com/ (now already taken down), then changed to https://cbotour.com/ and here is how the web pages look like:

App Icons for both Cryptogro and CBOT:

Take note that the apps looks exactly the same, having same functionalities, as if just a change of the brand logo for a white-labelled product. Also take note that these app downloads are not from official Apple AppStore or Google Play.

How the downloaded CBOT crypto app interface looks like:

The Instagram user (https://instagram.com/berheecesolozhchenko), chenxialing 陈曉玲 who was involved reached out via IG Chat, thereafter requesting for WhatsApp, following by LINE. She claims that she works as a Senior Accountant based in Washington D.C. The 2 WhatsApp numbers are +1 (406) 319-5868 (first number she used to contact) and +1 (706) 578-8023 (then changed to this one), which should be burner phones, because they are no longer active. Her LINE name is 玲.

** UPDATE on 22 Feb 2022: The profile pic & the photo feed has refreshed to totally different person!! Further confirmation that this IG account is a scammer. Wondering what is Instagram doing to authenticate the validity of a user.

** UPDATE on 28 Feb 2022: The Instagram User is not found! (Or have blocked me, most likely the latter)

** UPDATE on 12 Apr 2022: The scammer updated “her” profile again. This time round she is a fashion designer with her own label. And claims that “she” has 500 BTC. Perhaps her scam organisation does have that amount, pretty convinced now that they are large dark vice organisation larking in the shadows constantly scamming/cheating innocent people out there. Come on now law enforcements around the world, come together already. Look at the Instagram Handler/ID, it remained the same for so many different profiles, obviously the scam organisation is recycling the account and hunting for new victims.

** UPDATE on 9 Apr 2022: The scammer’s LINE updated to a man image, named Jack. This is an evidence of social engineering by a scam organisation switching every few months and scamming new targets.

** UPDATE on 7 May 2022: Today, I discovered 2 other similar looking websites in the following domain names - https://cbottld.com/h5#/ and https://cbotclub.com. Guess what, when I tried to use the login details from the original scam website URL https://cbotour.com, I can login too! And all the (fake) transactions and chat history etc all still remain.

Cloned scam website screenshots and take note on the websites’ URLs:

What happened?

Around late Dec 2021, Started off with a very small amount transferred into Cryptogro platform, made some profit and did a withdrawal successfully back to a well known crypto exchange, Huobi. Started to increase funds to trade and made some profits, then still quite unsure, skeptical about this Cryptogro platform, so did another withdrawal successfully.

Out of a sudden, chenxialing mentioned that CBOT has bought over Cryptogro, so we need to transfer our account balance from Cryptogro to CBOT. This was the part that is strange, because there isn't any news about the acquisition of Cryptogro by CBOT at all and the strange thing was there was a minimum transaction limit in order to do withdrawal, but this transfer from Cryptogro to CBOT does not has this limit. Nevertheless, the transfer from Cryptogro to CBOT was successful, able to do a successful small withdrawal. Here is the screenshot evidence of 108375 USDT transferred using TRC20 from Cryptogro to CBOT:

On CBOT, followed chenxialing's calls to make several trades and made quite a fair bit of profits, she then suddenly remembered that if the profits made was more than the invested amount, there will be a 20% personal tax on my account balance in order to withdraw any funds! And the tax cannot be deducted from my account balance, unless new funds are transferred into the platform.

That's when a realisation that something is very fishy! Checked around with some other Crypto traders and they all caution against paying this personal tax. When attempted to do withdrawal, this error message was shown:

After this episode on 26 Jan 2022, chenxialing stopped replying me on both Instagram and LINE. The CBOT Customer Support did not respond anymore. As of now, I am just monitoring when this CBOT platform will disappear and the website domain becomes invalid.

SCAMMED!

Please be careful, do research before you invest your funds or trust anyone that reach out to you online or any social channels.

If you have any questions or would like to know more info, reach out below.

If you have a story to share, reach out as well below.