Due diligence
Crypto scam checklist:
4 questions before you send money
How to spot a crypto scam comes down to four questions you can answer in ten minutes, before any money moves. Crypto is a real asset class with a trillion-dollar market behind it. The platform that pays 2% a day, the trader on WhatsApp and the text from your exchange are not. Here's the duck test, the four-question checker, and every door the scams come through.
This isn't a knowledge problem
Let's be straight. Almost nobody loses money to something they KNEW was fraudulent. They lose it to something that looked like an opportunity, showed up through someone they'd come to trust, and paid out the first time they tested it.
And what sits underneath almost every one of them? Somebody wants a big return on a small amount of money, fast, without doing the work. That's the whole setup. They hand over control of real money in exchange for numbers on a screen, typed by the person holding it.
So who is this page for? It's for the person who wants to check before money moves and is willing to spend ten minutes doing it. And if you're hoping somebody here will bless the platform paying you a fixed return every day, this is going to be a hard read.
Is crypto legit, or is the whole thing a scam?
Crypto is legit. Bitcoin has traded publicly since 2009, the asset class is measured in trillions of dollars, and I've held it since 2013. What isn't legit is the way most people enter it: a stranger's platform, a group chat, a text with a phone number in it. So getting scammed in a market doesn't make the market a scam. It makes verification a skill worth learning, and it's the first one we teach.
Why do we treat this as capital preservation?
Because every loss makes the road longer. If your goal is to build something in this market, then every time money goes down the wrong road, the work left gets harder and takes longer. So dodging one of these is worth more than any single good position you'll ever take.
How do you avoid crypto scams, in one sentence?
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it's probably a duck. You don't need to go investigate every "opportunity" with your own money to know what it is. Four questions, which are right below, and ten minutes on Google. That's the whole defense, and it's beaten every version of this I've seen in over a decade.
The four-question crypto scam checker
Chad Wittfeldt built this checklist for the Scam Vault, and new members run every offer through it before any money moves. Now, it's a score, not a verdict. One yes means slow down. Two means it's probably a scam. And three or more means we wouldn't put a dollar anywhere near it. Just know that some of these are a lot bigger than others.
- 01
Is the communication happening over WhatsApp or Telegram?
Neither app verifies anyone's identity, and neither has the sender registration that business texting requires. A real business registers its numbers. Scammers pick these apps for the anonymity. Layer a crypto offer on top of one and the odds turn hard against you.
- 02
Are you required to use one specific platform?
Anyone honest teaching this lets you trade wherever you're comfortable and will name several venues. If the opportunity only exists on their platform, they control the back door. That platform is a web page and the deposit address is theirs.
- 03
Is a fixed or certain return part of the pitch?
Nobody knows what a market will do in advance. A promised daily, weekly or monthly return on any timeline isn't an aggressive forecast. It's a claim of certainty about something uncertain, and no honest operator makes it.
- 04
What is the founder's or trader's real name?
A moniker like "Professor Bitcoin Tom" or "the Cyclops trader" exists to put distance between the operator and the people they take from. Search the real name. Someone claiming a decade of success has years of interviews, articles and stages behind them. If you can't find any of it, that absence is the finding.
How do you do your own research in ten minutes?
Two tools, common sense and Google. And I know how that sounds, but it still catches almost everything.
What's in the video: searching a real educator's name versus a scam moniker, what a decade of digital footprint looks like next to a profile that appeared three months ago, and why a platform whose only search result is its own website is the red flag.
What does a legitimate person look like on Google?
Years, not months. Podcasts, articles, stages, a company with an address, and reviews on platforms the person doesn't control. Now think about it this way. If somebody had been scamming people for ten years under their real name, don't you think you'd be able to find it? So ask the hard question and let the results answer.
What does a crypto scam look like on Google?
Either nothing at all, or the first result is a Reddit thread with "scam" in the title. Scam platforms rebrand every two or three months once the name gets outed, so the only result is the platform's own site. So click two or three pages deep, and look at the timestamps on their social profiles. An account that appeared last month, for somebody who supposedly reaches thousands? Come on.
What if it already happened?
Then the ten minutes are for something else. Sit with it for one day and answer three questions in writing: which emotion got you (greed, FOMO or romance), which red flags can you see now that you couldn't see then, and why you held on as long as you did. That audit is step one for new members who got scammed first, and it's why the second scam doesn't happen to the folks who do it. The whole way back is on after a crypto scam.
Three moves that show up in every version
Whatever the channel, these three keep showing up. Spot any one of them and you usually know enough.
The small withdrawal that works
The first withdrawal works on purpose. In one case we walked through, the victim pulled $150 out, read it as proof the platform was real, and deposited more. That $150 is a trust primer... and the cheapest marketing a fraud ever buys.
A fee to release your own money
Withdrawals stop working. Then a reason to send more shows up: taxes first, a withdrawal fee, an account flagged for review. No fee releases money that was never there. This is the last squeeze before they go quiet.
A dashboard instead of custody
The login portal is the trick, not the proof. As Chad Wittfeldt puts it: "They create the illusion that you have control by giving you a login portal to that fake account." A balance you can see isn't a balance you can move.
Which door do crypto scams come through?
Seven scams get taught like seven separate threats, but they're not. Four are doors, meaning how they reach you. Two are rooms, meaning how the money leaves. And one is what's waiting outside afterward. Every one of them has its own page with the module video on it.
Which crypto scam arrives as a text from your exchange?
The fake exchange text does. It says a withdrawal, a new device or a login just happened on your exchange account, and it gives you a phone number to call. You're not being targeted, because they blast every number, and the texts spike when the market moves. Call it and a polite call center spends 45 minutes walking you into a wallet they generated. I called one and recorded the whole thing: Coinbase scam text: what it is and what to do. The one-line answer is delete it.
Which crypto scam starts as a relationship?
The romance scam does: months of a relationship, and then "my aunt knows a trader." It starts on Instagram first, then Tinder, Hinge and Facebook. The longest I've seen ran eight or nine months and cost about $322,000. The slow build, the "let you withdraw a little first" math and the red flags are in crypto romance scam: how the long game works.
Which crypto scam hands you a dashboard?
The fake platform does, and the pitch never changes: send us your crypto, and we'll pay you daily compounding returns. A working dashboard, outsized referral rewards, one small withdrawal that works, and then the squeeze. It was USI Tech and BitConnect in 2017, and it's been the same shape every few months since. The whole evolution, plus the "have you heard of this platform?" tell, is in crypto investment scam: how the fake platform works.
Which crypto scam lives in a group chat?
The WhatsApp or Telegram trading group, and it runs there for the anonymity. No identity check, no registered sender, two minutes to create an account and one to throw it away. So the group where everybody's posting gains is just the platform scam with the web app ripped out. WhatsApp crypto scam: is that trading group real?
Which crypto scam wears a face you already follow?
The imposter profile does. Somebody takes a real person's name, photos and reputation, builds a profile, and messages strangers in that person's voice. It gets done to us daily. Three tells: they messaged you first, there's no verification check mark, and the account is thin. Our official channels, and everything we never do, are on the verification page.
Which crypto scam comes as a giveaway video?
The deepfake ad does, and no billionaire ever filmed it. A deepfaked public figure announces free crypto, and the link either drains a connected wallet or asks you to send crypto to be "doubled." The lip-sync gets better every month, so don't test the video. Test the offer. Deepfake crypto scam: the giveaway ad isn't real.
Who generated your recovery phrase?
This is the mechanism that catches careful people. A seed phrase gets generated by you, on your device, and nobody else ever sees it. So if someone hands you one, by email or over the phone, the wallet it opens is theirs. That's the ending of the Coinbase text call, and it's why seed phrase hygiene is the first custody lesson.
Nobody legitimate messages you first
Every educator and operator with a public brand gets impersonated eventually, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. The fake profiles borrow real names and real photos, then open with an offer the real person has never made: send us your crypto and we'll trade it for you.
We don't do that. Almost nobody serious does. We don't manage anyone's money, we don't take deposits, and we don't send unsolicited messages about investing. Simple as that.
Every one of our official profiles carries a verification check mark. Not sure an account is really ours? Our verification page lists every official channel, and you can contact us and we'll confirm it.
We never message people first.
What happens after the money's gone?
The recovery agent shows up. Sometimes it's the same operation on a different phone, posing as a fellow victim who "found someone who helped." Sometimes you go searching and find pages that were built for exactly that search. But either way the ask is the same: a fee up front for a result delivered later. The CFTC calls it advance fee fraud, and in June 2024 the FBI counted more than $9.9 million taken this way from people who had already been scammed once.
Why is the recovery agent the second crypto scam?
Because what he's selling can't be done. A confirmed transfer can't be reversed, and a wallet can't be opened without its key. The two things that sometimes work, meaning an exchange freezing funds that reached it and law enforcement acting on reports, cost you nothing and never contact you first. The bad news and the good news, with the stories, are in are there legitimate crypto recovery companies?
Where do the reports and the tax write-off fit?
Right after you stop sending money, and the exchange you sent from comes first, the same day. Then ic3.gov, the FTC and your local police. What each one gets you, and what it doesn't, is in how to report a crypto scam. And the only "recovery" most people ever see is a tax write-off, and the paperwork for that starts with those reports: crypto scam tax deduction.
What did you actually lose?
Three numbers get mixed up, and mixing them up makes the hole look deeper than it is. There's the principal you really sent, the gains the dashboard displayed, which never existed, and the fees and taxes you paid trying to withdraw. So if you put in $5,000 and saw $150,000 on screen, the loss is $5,000 plus the fees. Grieve the real number, not the fake one.
And then there's the rule that covers all of it, in Chad Wittfeldt's words: "Don't throw good money after bad."
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
Where people learn to verify
Most people who come to us want to learn to read a chart, but we start them somewhere else, because in our own member survey 92% of them were scammed before they ever found us. So week one is the Scam Vault: the personal audit of what happened, then why people get scammed in crypto, then every door above with the real texts, calls and DMs. And after that comes custody, a portfolio you understand, and a market you can read yourself.
That's the real difference with learning it inside a group. Somebody experienced looks at the offer with you, before you act... not after.
So start with the audit and the Scam Vault in the Crypto Renegades Skool Community, free for a week: after a crypto scam, the way back. And if you're already past that and want the full environment, with eight live sessions a week and coaches checking your work, that's the Crypto Renegades Mastermind.
Common questions
Run the four-question check before any money moves: is the communication on WhatsApp or Telegram, are you required to use one specific platform, is a fixed or certain return part of the pitch, and what is the founder's or trader's real name. One yes means slow down. Two means it's probably a scam. Three or more and we wouldn't put a dollar near it.
Never send crypto to a platform someone else chose, never trust a return that's promised, never deal with a trader on WhatsApp or Telegram, and never work with anyone whose real name you can't find and verify in ten minutes on Google. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it's probably a duck.
Yes. Bitcoin has traded publicly since 2009 and the asset class is measured in trillions of dollars. What isn't legit is the way most people are introduced to it: a stranger's platform, a group chat, a text with a phone number in it. Learn to verify first and the market is as real as any other.
No. Crypto is a real market with real volatility, and people lose money in it the same ways they lose money in any market. A crypto scam is different: a fake platform, a fake trader or a fake text that takes your money by promising a return it can never deliver. Getting scammed in a market doesn't make the market a scam.
A short checklist you run on any offer before money moves. Ours has four questions: WhatsApp or Telegram, a required platform, a fixed or certain return, and a real name you can verify. The more boxes you tick, the more likely it's a scam. Two is probably. Three or more is walk away.
The second one: are you required to use one specific platform? If the opportunity only exists on their site, they control the back door, and the one small withdrawal that worked was allowed on purpose. How the whole thing runs is in our crypto investment scam guide.
Because neither app verifies who you're talking to, so there's no accountability behind the account. That alone isn't proof, but layer a crypto offer on top and the odds turn hard against you. How the trading groups run is in our WhatsApp crypto scam guide.
No. A recovery phrase is generated by you, on your device, and nobody else ever sees it. No exchange issues one, no support agent has one for you, and none arrives by email. If someone gives you a phrase to import, the wallet it opens is theirs, and anything you move into it belongs to them.
Yes. A recovery offer usually messages you first, often on WhatsApp or Telegram, and asks for a fee up front for a result nobody can deliver. Why nobody can reverse a confirmed transfer is in our guide to legitimate crypto recovery companies.
It's close to universal, and most of the people who come to us were scammed before they found us. Smart, successful, respectable people get caught, because these operations are well built and run by people doing it full time. Forgive yourself, then do the one-day audit: which emotion, which red flags, why you held on.
Learn to do this properly
Due diligence is one skill. Holding your own keys, building a portfolio you understand and reading the market yourself are the others. Start with the audit and the Scam Vault in the Crypto Renegades Skool Community, free for a week. Crypto is risky, and nothing here is financial advice.
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