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There is a new investment scam targeting first-time founders. Here’s how it works.

John Biggs
3 min readDec 13, 2020

SCAMMERS! SCAMMERS!

Photo by Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash

Getting funded is a pain in the ass and recently a new scam is hitting founders with little experience with cryptocurrency.

I’ve tried my hardest to simplify this but there may be some terminology that isn’t clear. All you have to understand is this: if you don’t know how to control a cryptocurrency wallet securely, do not take investment in cryptocurrency.

I am writing this because I’ve seen people hurt by this scam and the companies in question did nothing. This is a warning for anyone in the same position.

The scam goes like this: you, the founder, might be running a fundraise or doing an equity funding round. The scammers will target users on Fundable, for example, and explain that they are very interested in your product and are willing to fund your entire round in crypto.

They will most likely contact you through WhatsApp. There is some suggestion that they have access to an exploit that will inject something into your Chrome browser but I haven’t confirmed that exploit. Just assume by the time you start chatting you’ve been compromised.

The scammer will say they are from a seemingly stodgy old investment group. One victim was contacted…

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John Biggs
John Biggs

Written by John Biggs

John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch.

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I'm a content manager at sixads. I'm fiery about marketing, writing and traveling but I decided to diversify into crypto, but due to my busy schedules, I lost hold of my login credentials.
This made me lose so much money even trying to…

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Thank you so much for posting this article. We just had an Albert Kriken supposedly from Monaco try and buy high end jewelry from my store wanting to pay with bitcoin. He had a local investment guy come in on his behalf, Kevin McManus with Corsair…

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