Crypto Scam Tracker
Search the table below by company name, scam type, or keywords to learn about the specific complaints the DFPI has received. Use this information to protect yourself when engaging in crypto transactions. Below the table is a glossary explaining the structures for common scams.
About the Tracker
The scams in this tracker are based on consumer complaints. They represent descriptions of losses incurred in transactions that complainants have identified as part of a fraudulent or deceptive operation. The DFPI has not verified the losses reported by complainants. As new scams emerge, the DFPI will update this list on an ongoing basis to alert and protect the public. If you hear about a scam that is not listed here, please let us know by submitting a complaint.
A Note on Imposters: Imposter websites are one of the most common reported scams. The companies or websites listed may sound similar to the names of other companies or websites that also operate in the marketplace. When companies or websites (fake or not) have look- or sound-alike names, the potential confusion created for consumers is real.
Attempting to take advantage of such confusion is a tactic employed by some bad actors looking to profit from unsuspecting consumers. The best way to avoid falling victim to a phony company or website is to do research on the company before you invest or send money.
| Primary Subject | Complaint Narrative | Scam Type | Website | Screenshot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wealth BAX Finance wealthbax.com | A California resident reports receiving a text message from a stranger named “Sandy.” After some conversation, Sandy suggested they move their conversations over to WhatsApp where their relationship developed. At some point, Sandy brought up crypto assets and introduced the victim to a crypto asset trading platform called Wealth Bax. Sandy instructed the victim to open an account and transfer funds to the website “h5.wealthbax.com/x/”. The victim was required to input their personal information, a picture of their driver’s license onto the website to create an account. The victim deposited crypto assets into their account and began trading. Sandy said that if the victim gave her money to help with her family, she in turn would add money to the victim’s account. At some point, the website showed that the investment was worth $281,992. But when the victim tried to withdraw money, the site demanded they pay IRS taxes of more than $40,000. When the victim reached out to Sandy, she said to pay, and that she had done so too in order to get her money. The victim was unable to withdraw any funds, and the site is no longer operational. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam Romance Scam | https://wealthbax.com/ https://h5.wealthbax.com h5.wealthbax.com/#/ h5.wealthbax.com wealthbax.com | Home Tab – Wealthbax |
| Tpkcoin web.directcurrent.top | A California resident reports joining a group via the Telegram app where they would learn about crypto asset trading from Mason, supposedly a partner at a well-known financial company. Following instructions provided by the group, the victim opened an account with a supposed crypto asset trading platform, tpkcoin ( also known as directcurrent) and funds. After this, the resident participated in a trading program called “big data trading” where they would receive trading signals from the leaders of the telegram group over the span of five days. But when the trading event ended the trading platform told the victim they owed $29,000 in commissions. The victim tried to withdraw the money from the trading platform to pay the commissions but was told they needed to pay $48,000 in taxes first. When the victim said they did not have the money to pay the taxes, an assistant with the platform advised them to download a cold wallet to withdraw funds in small transactions in order to avoid paying the taxes. The victim said they wanted to seek further advice before following those instructions. After that, they were blocked from the trading platform and could no longer access their account. The website for the platform is no longer operational. All told, the victim has not been able to recover their $4,200. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam Signal Selling Scam | https://web.directcurrent.top/mobile/home web.directcurrent.top | WhatsApp Chat – TPKcoin |
| SILD group crypto sildgroup.co sild.us | A California resident reports discovering a crypto asset investment group online led by a professor, Robert. Allegedly people were making revenue of 20 to 30% from their investments. Robert created a trading platform, SILD, where the entire group would trade together. The professor’s assistant, Angelina, showed the victim how to open an account on the SILD platform at sildgroup.co and make trades. The victim put in some money and began trading. Then, Robert then created a more exclusive trading platform where people could invest $50,000 to $3 million. The victim was told that they couldn’t participate in the new group because they didn’t have enough money. Angelina then reached out to the victim via WhatsApp, and told them their investment had tripled in two weeks, and encouraged them to try to join the new group. When the victim said they had $50,000 in the bank, Angelina said all the $50,000 slots were taken, but they could still join if they put in $100,000. Angelina said that the victim should try to get as much money as possible and she would kick in the rest to get to $100,000. The victim went to their bank to liquidate a CD worth $50,000, but the bank wouldn’t allow the transfer, because the platform appeared to be suspicious. So, the victim sent the funds directly to Angela and later sent $25,000 to Angelina’s crypto wallet. The website is no longer operational. All told, the victim invested more than $85,000 and has not been able to recover any of their money. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam Investment Group Scam | https://sildgroup.co/index.html#/home https://sildgroup.co sild.us | WhatsApp Chat – SILD |
| btm-vip.com bitaeqcke.net (Entity Impersonating BitMex) | A California resident reports being contacted by someone on Instagram, which led to a romantic relationship. At some point, the romantic interest brought up the subject of investing in crypto. They helped the victim purchase crypto assets, showed them how to open an account on a crypto asset exchange at the website bitaeqcke.net, and then convinced them that their account balance was growing. But, when the victim tried to withdraw the funds, the website demanded the a “tax profit” fee of more than $30,000 to be paid within 10 days. When the victim couldn’t pay, the person they met on Instagram cut off all communication. The victims have not been able to recover any of their funds from bitaeqcke.net and the website is no longer operational. The fraudulent platform appears to be using the logo BitMex. This is not to be confused with BitMex at https://www.bitmex.com/. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Imposter Scam Pig Butchering Scam Romance Scam | https://www.btm-vip.com/#/ www.bitaeqcke.net bitaeqcke.net btm-vip.com | Home Tab – bitaeqcke.net |
| webelon.org (Entity Impersonating Tesla and Elon Musk) | A California resident reports they viewed a Live Stream on YouTube where “Elon Musk” was offering to give away $100 million in crypto assets. The Livestream provided a QR code that when scanned led to the website webelon.org. Even though the Livestream promised a giveaway, people were required to send crypto assets to the site in order to participate. All told, the victim sent $5,000 to the wallet address bc1qnjy98m5g8d4qctp8s7v5j5jynsqhkdvvwm3840. The website is no longer operational. This scam appears to be impersonating Tesla by falsely using Tesla’s logo on its promotional materials and platform. This is not to be confused with Tesla at https://www.tesla.com/. Tesla is not in the business of promoting crypto giveaways. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Imposter Scam Crypto Giveaway/Airdrop Scam Pig Butchering Scam | https://webelon.org webelon.org | Promotion – Webelon |
| Capiturly.io | The victim was contacted by “Sharon,” who claimed to be a stock broker. Sharon convinced the victim to transfer Bitcoin to the website https://capiturly.io/ for trading purposes. The victim sent bitcoin to the following address: -bc1qdv4zpss0c0c868pwp8r0nvuds5vxwa0vtha2wm. After the transfer, the victim was unable to withdraw the funds. The website is no longer in operation. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam | https://capiturly.io/ Capiturly.io | Home Page – Capiturly |
| Ceypro investments | A California resident reports that “Ashley” contacted them through Instagram claiming to be an experienced crypto asset investor. She mentioned Ceypro investments, and following her instructions, the victim started to invest and was told their balance was supposedly increasing. But when the victim tried to withdraw their money, Ashley said they needed to put in additional funds to do so. All told, the victim lost $100,000. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam | ||
| SAXO Group (Entity impersonating Saxo Bank) | Two California residents reported their experiences investing with the crypto asset trading platform, “SAXO Group.” The first victim met someone on Facebook Messenger and later continued their conversations on WhatsApp. Their internet friend said he was investing in gold and claimed that he was advised on how to invest by his uncle. The friend instructed the victim how to download the application called SAXO Group and open an account there, and then how to transfer crypto assets into the account. The victim followed the instructions and believed they were making money, but when they tried to withdraw their funds, the site demanded they pay more than $65,000 for “personal” taxes. The victim was unable to recover their money. All told, they lost $49,000 to the site. The second victim received a call from “Lee”, who introduced them to a gold investment opportunity through Saxo Group. Lee provided instructions on how to download the Saxo app and create an account. Over time, Lee encouraged the victim to transfer more and more money into the account. The victim believed they were earning profits from their trading. But when they tried to withdraw funds, the site demanded they pay more than $500,000 for “advance” taxes to the Dutch government. The victim paid the tax, and soon after Lee stopped talking to the victim. All told, the victim lost a total of $1,572,870.63 to this site. This is not to be confused with the investment bank Saxo bank at https://www.home.saxo/. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Imposter Scam Pig Butchering Scam Romance Scam | ||
| cfxlifestyle.com | A California resident reports they met someone online that invited them to invest in cryptocurrency with CFX Lifestyle at cfxlifestyle.com. The minimum investment was $5,000 and the victim was promised they would earn profits, which they could withdraw after 3 months. The victim invested $5,000, but two weeks before they were supposed to be paid, the company claimed it was having issues with the IRS for not paying taxes. To date, the victim has not been able to recover their $5,000. The website is no longer operational. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam | https://cfxlifestyle.com/ cfxlifestyle.com | |
| YFI App yfiapp.com | A California resident reports they were solicited via Facebook by an employee of a company that operated the website www.YFIAPP.com. The employee promised the victim could earn 1%-1.8% daily on their Crypto wallet balance. The resident reports that they, alongside other investors, were instructed to transfer funds to a particular crypto wallet address as some sort of group investment. However, as soon as that wallet address accumulated a high balance, the resident reported seeing the scammers connect the wallet to a dapp that drained their accumuated funds. Then someone contacted the victim, and said if they transferred $200,000 to the YFIAPP platform they would have access to all their money. The victim has not been able to recuperate their funds and the website is no longer operational. All told, The victim lost over $61,000. | Fraudulent Trading Platform Pig Butchering Scam | https://yfiapp.com www.YFIAPP.com yfiapp.com https://www.yfiapp.com/#/trading |
Glossary
Advance Fee Scam – Scammer requests an upfront payment, promising a future service or huge return on investment.
Affinity Scams – Scammer targets members of an identifiable group (e.g., cultural, religious, or ethnic community) and curries favor with them to rope them into a fraudulent investment opportunity.
AI Investment Scam – An investment scam that involves the promise of high returns on investments through the use of a “proprietary” AI system or automated trading bot.
Asset Recovery Scam – Scam by a third party requiring a fee to “recover” funds lost in a prior fraudulent transaction.
Bait and Switch Scams – A scam to mislead buyers, whereby a seller advertises an appealing but ingenuine offer to sell a financial product or service that the seller does not actually intend to sell. Instead, the seller offers a sub-par, defective, or unwanted product or service. For crypto, this might be most relevant to non-fungible tokens.
Bitcoin Mining Scam – A scam that involves the promotion of a fraudulent investment opportunity related to bitcoin mining. This involves a scammer soliciting an investment opportunity involving the development of a bitcoin mining operation. Scammers will typical purport that invested funds will go into developing the infrastructure necessary to run a bitcoin mining operation (e.g. hardware GPUs, servers, etc.), and that investors will earn a portion of the proceeds from the rewards associated with successfully mining bitcoin.
Crypto Blackmail Scam – Scammer sends emails or physical mails to victims saying they have personal information about the victim or embarrassing or compromising photos or videos. They scammer then threatens to make these things personal information public unless the victim pays them in cryptocurrency.
Crypto Gaming Scam – Scam involving the use of fake gaming applications (apps) with the intent of stealing crypto from victims. Scammers may advertise the apps as play-to-earn games offering financial incentives for players, but will typically require victims to create a cryptocurrency wallet within platform to participate in the game. Victims may be incentivized to deposit additional crypto for in-game rewards and may be misled into thinking they are accumulating rewards through their participation in the game. At a certain point, the scammers may drain victim wallets using malicious programs victims unknowingly activated upon joining the game.
Crypto Job Scam – Scammers impersonate recruiters and offer fake job opportunities with the intent to steal crypto assets and personal information. These opportunities typically offer questionable terms that are too good to be true and may promise monetary rewards or bonuses for completing certain tasks from the comfort of your desk. However these tasks are assigned with the intent of deceive victims to send crypto assets and/or personal information.
Crypto Wallet Drainer Attack – Crypto Wallet Drainers Attacks are a subset of Hacking through the use of a type of malware known as a crypto wallet drainer. Crypto wallet drainers are tools that scammers can use to automate the draining of crypto assets from a victim’s cryptocurrency wallet while the victim is interacting with a malicious website posing as a website for cryptocurrency projects or trading.
The risk of being exploited by a malware attack extends beyond interacting with obscure or speculative cryptocurrency projects and applies to any online engagement with unusual websites that may be malicious. DFPI recommends consumers to exercise caution when interacting with the platforms of lesser-known cryptocurrency projects that are more speculative in nature. In addition, DFPI also cautions consumers to check the domain names when accessing websites of well-known cryptocurrency projects to ensure they are not interacting with an imposter website.
Fraudulent Trading Platform – Scammer develops a fraudulent website or application and convinces victims to deposit funds to the platform under the guise of providing victims access to a unique investment opportunity. The fraudulent platforms appear legitimate, even going as far as replicating price movements and producing artificial gains.
Hacking – Exploiting a computer system or private network inside a computer with the intent of stealing personal information, such as passwords and bank account information, for financial gain.
High Yield Investment Programs (HYIP) – Ponzi schemes that promise passive income and high returns in short periods of time through an investment of crypto assets. These schemes often offer payment structures similar to that of multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes to recruit new investors, promising early investors a percentage of the profits of other investors they recruit. These schemes are usually heavily promoted through social media and may use paid social media promoters to market their product. Initially, the investment platform will appear legitimate and produce positive returns on a consistent basis. However, scammer will eventually take off with the invested funds and freeze the platform under the guise of technical issues, before completing shutting down the platform.
Identity Theft – Crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain (Aka identity fraud).
Imposter Scams – Scammer impersonates a legitimate business, government agent, or well-known figure to gain access to a user’s systems and personal information for financial gain (e.g. to steal the user’s assets).
Investment Group Scam – A scam that involves the use of private messaging rooms/group chats (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.) to promote a fraudulent investment opportunity. In some cases, victims may be targeted individually by an agent of the scam through social media and coerced into being brought into the group. In others, victims are directly added into an investment group chat. Many times the group chats are led by a “guru” who directs the group followed by an assistant that acts as a second-in-command. Guru’s may be impersonating a well-known public figure or may be falsely portraying themselves as registered professionals. Early on, the guru may give general market advice to to gain the group’s confidence and then push group to trade based on their directions. Agents of the scam may also be in the group chat masquerading as fellow investors using fake accounts or use bots to inflate the number of perceived investors in the group chat.
Liquidity Mining/Yield Farming Scam – Liquidity mining/Yield Farming is an investment strategy used to earn passive income with crypto assets. Investors stake their crypto assets in a decentralized exchange (DEX) or other form of liquidity pool to provide traders with the liquidity to conduct transactions on the platform. In exchange, investors earn rewards in the form of interest, governance tokens, or other rewards. In a liquidity mining/yield farming scam, victims move cryptocurrency from their wallets to the liquidity mining platform and see the purported returns on a falsified dashboard. Believing their investments to be a success, victims purchase additional cryptocurrency. Scammers ultimately move all stored cryptocurrency and investments made to a scammer-controlled wallet.
Crypto Giveaway/Airdrop Scam – Scammer will compromise or impersonate a prominent public figure (e.g. through AI-created deepfakes) or company and claim to give away free crypto and may use a variety of methods to promote the giveaway such as livestream events, promotion on social media, or offering airdrops on a certain website or platform. However, these promotions typically offer questionable terms that are too good to be true and may either an attempt to elicit payment of crypto assets or may be part of a broader phishing scheme designed to access victim’s private keys, wallet address, and/or other sensitive information.
Pig Butchering Scams – Scammer may use a variety of methods to establish a relationship (either social, romantic, or business focus), and then gain the victim’s confidence and gradually introduce the victim to a fraudulent investment opportunity. In most cases, Scammer will approach victims through social media or dating apps, ask to take the conversation offline (e.g., Whatsapp, WeChat), and then communicate regularly with the victim to establish the relationship. Once Scammer has the victim’s trust, Scammer will then propose an investment opportunity related to crypto assets. Scammer will offer to train the victim to set up an account on an exchange to purchase crypto assets, and then provide a website or wallet address for the victim to transfer funds in order to participate in the investment opportunity. The fraudulent platform investment opportunity is often designed to appear legitimate, and often produces artificial gains to keep the victim engaged in the platform and possibly deposit more funds. However, the victim is never able to withdraw their funds from the site, and may be asked to transfer even more funds before anything can be withdrawn through a variety of excuses (e.g., service fees, IRS taxes, etc.).
Ransomware – Scammer gains access to a victim’s computer systems or private network, encrypts sensitive information or data, and demands a ransom from the victim to restore access to the encrypted information or data upon payment. Scammer will then provide detailed instructions on how to pay the fee to get the decryption key and may accept payment in crypto assets.
Romance or Social Media Scam – Scammer adopts a fake online profile to gain a victim’s affection and trust and then uses the illusion of a romantic or close relationship to manipulate and/or steal from the victim.
Rug Pull Scam – Derived from the expression “pulling the rug out”. Variation of investment scheme where a developer attracts investors to a new cryptocurrency project (e.g., a new token or initial coin offering) through online crowdfunding, pumps up the value of the investment, and then pulls out before the project is built, leaving investors with a worthless currency.
Signal Selling Scam – Scammer offer systems or software that claim to provide accurate and profitable trading signals through some sort of proprietary insider knowledge, secret strategies, or automated systems that can lead to significant profits. However, when coupled with the use of a fraudulent trading platform, these trade signals may be completely fabricated and may be used to gain the victim’s confidence and keep them engaged with the fraudulent trading platform.
Tech Support Scam – Tech support scammers want victims to believe they have a serious problem with their computer, like a virus. They want victims to pay for tech support services the victims don’t need, to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. They often ask victims to pay by wiring money, putting money on a gift card, prepaid card or cash reload card, or using a money transfer app because they know those types of payments can be hard to reverse.
* Please note the terms and definitions are constantly reviewed and may change based on developments in the crypto space. Please also be aware that a crypto scam may incorporate elements of multiple types of scams.
A Note for Companies: If you believe you or your company has been identified in error, please contact the DFPI at ask.dfpi@dfpi.ca.gov.
Last updated: Mar 19, 2025 @ 10:28 am