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Toshiya Matsumoto
Toshiya Matsumoto

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Crypto/Web3 Scammers in LinkedIn 😈

I received quite a few headhunting DM in the LinkedIn from 😈scammers😈 recently.

I've played around with them for a bit to see what they are like.

Who?

They are hacked accounts. Their professions I've met are

  • Food Consultant
  • Manager at Hotel and Restaurant
  • Hotel Bartender
  • CIO in an IT corporation

What They Offer

They offer an opportunity for Engineer role in web3.0/crypto space like the followings:

  • Exciting opportunity to develop a Web3 food token website.
  • DEX project, but currently lacking the necessary hands to develop it successfully.
  • Platform for trading cryptocurrencies referred to as a Dex

Also they have

  • Github project
  • Job Description (using Google Document)

How They Trap You

They commonly shared the Github projects with half way done or as an assignment to measure your engineering skills, or whatever reasons they are, and attempted to make you download them.

I've seen somewhere in the LinkedIn thread but it seems those projects have a virus library and designed to skim your important data when you run it in your local.

How To Detect It 🤡

  • Check their professions in their LinkedIn page. None of them had any association with IT startup or crypto. Since the accounts are hacked and impersonated, they are real person and even have good reputations but have a deep breath first, and try to logically connect the dots.
  • They responds to you quite fast in 24 hours regardless of where they live.
  • Contributors in the Github account are beginners despite the fact that their main page is very decorative with prototype projects.
  • Unprofessional traces somewhere. For example this person's name does not start with the capital letter, although their written text looks professional overall probably due to with AI tools.

Thoughts

As you can see, making up combining Food Consultant and "food token", with the jargon such as react, node, web3 and solidity, they are not just a random scammers with lack of IT knowledge.

I guess they use AI tools to generate the most seemingly adequate questions from your CV/Resume.

Lastly

It seems reasonable to reach the conclusion that they are fraud on the spot but if you are desperate or really looking for an opportunity for your dream, it is fair enough for you to believe it.

I wish this article helps.

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