I never thought it could happen to me... but today I got scammed for the first time in the crypto sphere...
Today I had planned to buy an amount of Innova coins on the Cryptopia exchange because I wanted to get enough to be able to setup a masternode. In total you need 1000 INN and I had already accumulated a little over 500 so I needed a little less then 500 INN. I placed an order for those coins on Cryptopia for the current market price but nobody seemed to be selling... my order stood there for hours...
I got the idea to go have a chat with fellow Innova enthusiasts in their Discord and I started chatting with them. A few responded, telling me to keep in mind not to withdraw too many INN at once from Cryptopia because apparently they seem to be having some issues. Talked a bit more and I let them know that I was planning to get enough INN to setup that masternode. I told them that my order wasn't getting filled...
All of a sudden a user with the screen name "safetx#7747" send me a DM and he told me that could sell me the coins if I wanted them. We agreed on the price and I asked him how we could make the transfer happen in a safe and secure manner. He asked me if I knew about the "Transfer" feature on Cryptopia. I told him I didn't. He explained that it was a safe feature build to transfer coins to each other. We would both use that feature on the exchange and verify each other during the process. I would enter the amount of BTC and his Cryptopia screen name (cryptomaniac7) and he would enter my screen name and the amount of INN.
Here's the screenshot of the first thing you see when clicking on the Transfer feature. Notice the arrows pointing from one user to the other, going both ways:
Up until that point everything seemed legit. I had understand that we were going to use a safe feature on a verified exchange and it would work similar to an escrow service. Wanting those INN coins I took another look at the transfer screen that I had just verified the scammer in and I thought that Cryptopia would prompt me with a message explaining what was going to happen, that the other party had done their part and after clicking on OK or Next after that screen the transfer would actually happen but not until you would get one final verification.
Here's a screenshot of the next screen where you're supposed to verify the other user, enter the amount you are going to send. Notice the arrows again, pointing from one user to the other going both ways!
I took a real good look at it. In my opinion the interface made it clear to me that it was a process for two users sending coins to each other. The arrows pointed that out. I was expecting all the information to be gathered and showed to me after clicking on Next. So that's what I did, I clicked on Next. To my big surprise there was NO next step. There was NO pop-up. There was NO new window to verify anything. There was no waiting for the other party to do the same and that you could see that the other party was going to send coins as well. Again... all screenshots show arrows pointing at each other! It is suggested that it's a two way transfer! No... as a matter of fact there is none of this. After clicking on the Next button (not complete or send or anything else) the transfer occurred immediately. It was at that time that I knew that I got scammed.
The explanation of the scammer before and during the process when we talked via Discord, English not being my native language, my eagerness to get the coins, the lack of information or perhaps misinformation of the Cryptopia exchange which does not protect its users made it so that I trusted the whole thing... I clicked on that Next button and again... there was no message, no pop-up, no new "Are you sure" message before actually transferring my BTC.
So... I had simply transferred 0.204BTC to the scammer. The transfer feature on Cryptopia is a ONE WAY TRANSACTION! Cryptopia should absolutely do BETTER to protect their users!
I did not think it could happen to me... but it did today. I feel really stupid. Lesson has been learned. For me this means that I will avoid Cryptopia as of now. I will never use any other process to get coins other than using an actual exchange and no other feature that exchanges may have.
Luckily for me those 0.204BTC only cost me €500 from when I bought ETH a while back and now had made so much profit that I sold those ETH for those 0.204BTC in order to get these INN coins. But I still lost 0.204BTC...
I wrote this post to hopefully prevent this from happening to other people... To the scammer: hopefully karma will do its work.
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