A female master's student was defrauded of 750,000 yuan. Was it a fake Huobi?

"Hello, excuse me. I'm a customer service representative from Huobi.com. We are currently doing an event and professional analysts will be in the group to help with orders for free. I'll add you on WeChat and invite you to join the group to learn."

Are you in the cryptocurrency space and get calls like this from time to time?

Most of these phone numbers start with 146, 165, or 170, and the caller IDs are all over the world. The other party seems to know that you are a cryptocurrency user. But once you join the group, they either ask you to register for a fake exchange to deposit coins, or they try to sell you fake coins. In short, they try to trick you into spending money.

In fact, Huobi, OKEx and other platforms have repeatedly stated that those who call are scammers impersonating customer service.

In addition to impersonating customer service, there are now scams impersonating marriage partners.

According to China Economic Net, Xiaoli, a 31-year-old master's degree holder from a Beijing university and originally from Hunan, was lured step by step into a trap by a man she met on a dating website. In just four days, she was defrauded of 750,000 yuan on the so-called "Huobi.com."

Huobi.com, a female master's degree holder, was defrauded of 750,000 yuan in 4 days...

It seems that in future cryptocurrency transactions, in addition to preventing "explosion", we must also prevent fraud.

Lost 750,000 on Huobi?

"Make plans based on the principal. If the trend is good, the profit will be around 20%."

"Silly, money in the bank is dead money. Now is the era of money making money. I can share what I have done with you and let you experience it together."

"Download it, register your own independent account and take a screenshot for me."

On April 13, Xiaoli met a man with the online name "Love is Everywhere" through a dating website.

Under the guidance of the other party, Xiaoli registered on the "Huobi Exchange" and paid RMB 2,000 for the first time to purchase 250 USDT. Platform information showed that Xiaoli ultimately earned 50 USDT from this transaction.

During the first transaction, Xiaoli's dating partner reminded her to choose a bank card for payment.

When Xiaoli found out that she chose Alipay as her payment method, her partner blamed her: "I just told you to choose a bank card because Alipay will have risk warnings when paying with unfamiliar accounts. Do you understand what I mean?"

Then, under the "guidance" of her marriage partner, Xiaoli downloaded an arbitrage platform called "IMF" (to convert the purchased USDT into RMB). After going through a series of tedious procedures, she sold a total of 300 USDT, and Xiaoli made a net profit of 268.87 yuan.

After having tasted the sweetness of the first attempt, Xiaoli started her second operation on April 14 under the guidance of her marriage partner. This time, Xiaoli also made money.

At 8 p.m. on April 14, the marriage partner once again threw out bait to Xiaoli, but this time he required a lot of capital.

Following the "advice" of her marriage partner, Xiaoli went to the nearest Agricultural Bank of China on April 15 to increase her credit limit. She also took the initiative to apply for a lightning loan of 194,000 yuan from China Merchants Bank, a 300,000 yuan loan, 50,000 yuan from Borrowing, and 200,000 yuan of her own savings, preparing a total of 750,000 yuan.

From April 13 to April 15, Xiaoli's three purchase records on the "Huobi Exchange" software

The transaction records show that at 16:00 on April 15, Xiaoli used 750,000 yuan to buy a total of 103,450 USDT. The platform prompts that it will take 24 hours to show the profit or loss.

At 4 p.m. on April 16, Xiaoli waited for the result in constant tension: all the 103,450 USDT she bought the day before was lost.

Xiaoli just woke up from her dream and realized that she had been cheated.

As of now, Xiaoli has reported the case to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, and the case is being handled.

Suspicious liquidation

While sighing over Xiaoli's experience, anyone who has a little knowledge of the cryptocurrency industry will find that the so-called "Huobi Exchange" that caused Xiaoli to be deceived is not the real Huobi.

It is a fake platform pretending to be Huobi.

In Xiaoli’s third transaction, which was the 750,000 All-in transaction, Huobi told Xiaoli that it would take 24 hours to show the profit or loss.

It is understood that the profit and loss display of Huobi platform, whether it is spot or contract, is real-time, and the profit and loss display will not be delayed due to the huge amount of funds.

“This rule is ridiculous.” A person related to Huobi told Deepchain Finance, “In fact, no legitimate trading platform in the industry would have such a ridiculous rule.”

In addition, according to the coin purchase records that Xiaoli reported to the media, the 750,000 yuan was used to purchase a long contract of QTUM/USDT.

We can see that within 1 day, the price of QTUM fell from 1.3385 to 1.3378, with a cumulative decline of 0.05%. It is a bit sensational to lose all 750,000 in an almost negligible drop.

"If a 0.05% drop wipes out the entire 750,000 yuan principal, a 1,400x leverage is required." A Huobi source told DeepChain Finance, "However, the Huobi platform's delivery contracts only have a maximum leverage of 20x, and the perpetual contracts only have a maximum leverage of 125x, which is less than one-tenth of the 1,400x leverage."

It is worth noting that during Xiaoli’s first two recharges, her partner warned her that it would be better to use the bank card channel.

When Xiaoli chose to transfer money through Alipay, she was criticized by her marriage partner.

In fact, as a cryptocurrency exchange, whether it is Huobi, OKEx or other formal exchanges, they will not interfere with users' recharge channels, and whether it is a bank card or Alipay, there is no difference except that there is a slight difference in the OTC premium.

Perhaps her marriage partner is worried that the risk warning that pops up when Alipay verifies the transaction will make Xiaoli wary.

Anyone who has used regular exchanges such as Huobi knows that if they want to withdraw USDT, they only need to find a suitable buyer in the OTC market built into the exchange platform. The buyer transfers the money and the user transfers the currency. There is no need to jump to third-party platforms such as IMF.

This IMF is not the International Monetary Fund as we usually understand it, but a trading platform.

As early as April this year, someone reported that the IMF platform was suspected of fraud.

According to Blockchain 315, on April 19, four days after Xiaoli was cheated, a player experienced the same thing as Xiaoli on the IMF platform.

The player invested 850,000 yuan to short Bitcoin when it was $7,134.51, and the profit and loss were shown one day later.

At 9 pm on April 20, this short order was fully liquidated at $7,135.22, a gain of 0.01%.

At that time, the price of Bitcoin on the regular Huobi platform was US$7028.

Afterwards, when the player contacted the customer service of the IMF platform to report the problem, the customer service only left a message saying "personal operations have nothing to do with the platform."

At that time, the player also thought that the IMF platform was suspected of being a plug-in, but in fact, this IMF platform was not a plug-in, but a scam.

Interestingly, the IMF website was registered on March 28 this year.

It took less than a month from the time Xiaoli registered to the time she was cheated.

Huobi and other exchanges were caught in the crossfire

In fact, mainstream exchanges in the cryptocurrency industry have always been misused by criminals to varying degrees.

As a result, companies such as Huobi and OKEx have to issue announcements every once in a while to warn users to be wary of criminals maliciously impersonating Huobi officials, and have added official verification channels to their respective official websites to allow users to verify the legitimacy of the website.

Taking the "Huobi Exchange" in this article as an example, there are many URLs for it.

When searching for huobi in Baidu, the first thing that comes into view is not the regular Huobi exchange, but Huobi.com.

The URL of 99ppc.com was also verified by the official Huobi website and it stated that “no such person exists”.

Although the other "Huobi.com" has a similar interface to the previous Huobi.com, its URL is completely different.

This website is naturally not an official channel of Huobi.

It is worth noting that according to the website traffic query website SimilarWeb, the website with the domain name 99ppc.com has attracted more than 1 million visits to date, of which 93.13% of the visitors are from China.

The website, similar to the IMF platform, was also registered in March and has seen rapid growth in traffic since then.

"There are more and more fraud cases using the names of exchanges, which is closely related to the gradual popularity of cryptocurrencies in recent years." A blockchain practitioner told Deepchain Finance, "especially OK and Huobi have appeared on CCTV one after another."

It attracted a lot of attention from people outside the circle.

However, many people outside the circle only have a vague impression of the names of the leading exchanges, but do not know much about them, so they are exploited by criminals.

In addition, due to policy supervision, almost every exchange in the cryptocurrency industry has changed several domain names. Not to mention outsiders, even blockchain practitioners often cannot find the correct URL in the first place.

Finally, the unique anonymity of cryptocurrency also gives criminals more room to maneuver during the fraud process.

In July last year, CCTV's "Rule of Law Online" column reported a "new" telecommunications fraud case in which the criminals did not use the traditional telecommunications fraud method of "transferring 'first-level card' to multiple 'second-level cards' or 'third-level cards' and then withdrawing cash from ATMs separately"; instead, after transferring to the "second-level card", they first purchased digital currencies such as Bitcoin from a digital currency trading platform, and then sought to sell the Bitcoin again to "launder" the fraudulent funds in disguise.

It is precisely because of this that the police encountered a bottleneck when tracing the withdrawal process of the third-level cards.

After that, the police, with the cooperation of Huobi, successfully tracked the account of the criminals, locked the suspect through the bank account, and finally successfully arrested the suspect.

All these factors have given criminals invisible opportunities to take advantage.

The thriving growth of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry has attracted the attention of outsiders on the one hand, and scammers on the other.

On the one hand, these scammers impersonate the names of leading exchanges, and on the other hand, they promise high returns, making up lies one after another to confuse the majority of users.

It is very likely that users will not be able to tell the difference and fall into the trap of scammers and become their prey.

Previously, CPPCC member Lou Jiwei and China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission Chairman Guo Shuqing stated on different occasions that when the return rate of a financial product exceeds 6%, it should be treated with caution.

Central Bank Governor Yi Gang has also said that if an investment opportunity claims to have returns of more than double digits, one must be careful.

Faced with all kinds of scams, users must keep their eyes open and be wary of the high returns promised by the other party. In addition, they must be more cautious and must gain in-depth understanding through various channels before making an investment decision.

The way to be responsible for your own assets is to increase awareness and be more vigilant.