Scammers routinely target the community with offers that people who are not informed would find difficult to resist. The latest big scam is targeting Ripple, the international remittance service that has been making waves in the past couple of years.
The promoters of the scam are using social media and the Telegram, the messaging app to spread words about the scheme. According to information seen on Telegram, the admin promoting the scheme wrote:
“Free Ripple XRP Giveaway
We are glad to announce our
alliance with the RIPPLE community, together we giving away 10,000,000 RIPPLE to all crypto lovers. For those who did not participate in the previous giveaway, you now have a chance to do so now.”
The statement purportedly from the Ripple Team announced that it was an opportunity for those that did not participate in previous giveaways to do so.
We checked the Ripple social channels and noticed this message pinned on the official Ripple Twitter page, alerting the community of the scam:
“We’ve noticed an increase in fraudulent accounts claiming to be @Ripple or members of the Ripple Team offering giveaways. Be on alert – they are not official accounts.”
We’ve noticed an increase in fraudulent accounts claiming to be @Ripple or members of the Ripple Team offering giveaways.
— Ripple (@Ripple) February 21, 2018
Be on alert – they are not official accounts.
At the scam site, the so-called competition rules stated that participants had to send between 1000XRP and 50,000XRP to qualify for the giveaway. It added that 1000XRP sent to the scammer’s wallet would entitle the sender to 10,000XRP while a wallet that sends 10,000XRP would automatically receive back 100,000XRP.
The statement further added that all nationalities could participate including United States citizens who are routinely excluded from certain digital currency investments due to stringent compliance issue.
To make the scam appear legitimate, the originators added a disclaimer:
“Risk warning: Cryptocurrency investment is subject to high market risk. Please make your investments cautiously. Ripple will make best efforts to choose high quality coins, but will not be responsible for your investment losses.”
