Another Day, Another Scam – Goxtrade

The cryptocurrency market abounds in scams, and news of a new scam has once again surfaced. It seems as though, an alleged Bitcoin (BTC) exchange, Goxtrade, has been accused of fraud.

A report in the news publication TechCrunch states that the exchange has been picking up photos of unaffiliated people from social media sites and passing them off as their own employees. They have even gone to the extent of putting up these pictures online on their staff gallery. Some of their real names have been published too.

Amber Baldet, co-founder of blockchain startup Clovyr, is one of the affected, whose name and picture were featured on Goxtrade’s staff deck. Soon after finding out, she tweeted:

https://twitter.com/AmberBaldet/status/1129382436851331072

That’s not all that is wrong with Goxtrade. TechCrunch also reports that the company is not registered at its advertised address and it is absent from the United Kingdom’s registry of companies and businesses. This hints at a major ongoing scam that the company may be running, which thankfully has come to light before things got out of hand.

The entire thing is a facade, and one that has been crafted poorly. This is clear from the fact that the contact information that has been provided on their site, does not check out. The advertised phone number of the company connects one to unaffiliated individuals. For now, it directs to a now-defunct Birmingham clothing company. The listed email address is associated with Russian internet company Yandex.

It is thus pretty clear that Goxtrade is not to be trusted. Why someone would expect to get away with a scam of this proportion, is baffling, but whoever has set up this elaborate facade, hasn’t been able to cause any monetary harm to the investors.