How We Almost Branded a Plane for $200K and Exposed a Crypto Scammer
We could have lost a lot of money but exposed a cunning fraudster. Here is how we did it.
Recently, we were approached by a representative of Egyptair (allegedly) who offered us an intriguing proposal. We would pay him $200,000 in GRD tokens (Guarda’s own token) for a year, and Egypt Air would place our logo on their planes, brochures, and pay miles in our GRD tokens. Great deal, isn’t it? But due diligence exists for a reason.
We decided to do some research. Here is what we discovered:
Clues
The person who reached out to us has a premium account on LinkedIn but it didn’t look too reliable. As you can see there is a typo: “Egypair” instead of “EgyptAir”.
Email Address Verification
We checked where the original email came from. Interestingly enough, it was sent from the EgyptAir email server.
Strategic Partnership Presentation
The presentation did look quite official but we didn’t find any similar branded documents.
Exposure
We scheduled a Zoom meeting with the representative to further discuss the proposal. His voice and video were not in sync. But that was not the only thing that surprised us.
The representative’s face looked familiar. He looked just like Nischal Shetty, the CEO of WazirX. We instantly recognized him during a video call but decided to remain silent to check everything.
We even found the video this guy was using to pretend that he looked like Nischal. The background and even the shirt matched. Take a look:
Everything became crystal clear—it was a scammer, as we thought, who was impersonating Nischal Shetty.
After doing some digging around we discovered this thread:
? A very interesting story just finished, we were almost scammed to the tune of $150,000 at @parasol_finance.
Let's make a thread to explain you all this. ??
— I'm Clint ⚡️ (@thisisclint21) May 19, 2022
The Bottom Line
We have to admit that the fraudster did a good job trying to pull all of this. They seemed to be ready to share the contract and even pass the KYC with a decent LinkedIn page, a presentation that looks legit.
Why did we decide to share all of this? This guy turned out to be pretty good at scamming people and this story is a great reminder to always be careful and stay alert.
There is also an article about different types of scams on Guarda Academy. Check it out and keep your crypto safe.
Cryptocurrency Scams: Tips from Guarda to save your funds
As the use of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies becomes more and more adopted, scams targeting these currencies have also spread.In this article, we explain how not to fall victim to all common types of scams and detail the most dangerous ones, so you know how to avoid them.
Be careful and keep an eye on your assets!
Guarda Team