When you see a screenshot like this, you wonder what transpired in the first place.
Well here is how it went: A number of people who decided to take the extra step to secure votes for themselves and got swindled of the SBD's they so craved.
Desperation is a tool that scammers use when they want to swindle an innocent person off his/her sbd/steem.
Why do people scam?
The people who do so, do it because they are lazy and impatient. However, what people do not realize is that scamming requires patience as they have to hope to catch a victim.
Why opt for scamming when steemit has offered you a gift? Because some suckers are always available 24/7 just making themselves available to be scammed.
First case
The first case is that of a scammer using the @val-a name to scam on steemit chat
The victim (because he was scammed), actually felt he was addressing the real person. Sadly I became aware of it after the deed had been done, but a simple investigation starting from the tone of the chat could have solved the case before it even happened.
From the image above, the highlighted "X" shows some errors the person could have seen, although not all were visible. If the person had toured the blog of the real @val-a, the person would have avoided a disaster.
Let us take a look...
The real person has given all of His SP as delegation to the curie project and a trip to his blog will prove that. Let us assume for the sake of ignorance, we can also use another way to determine how much his remaining SP is worth as an upvote, we go to www.steemnow.com and input his name into the place for name and hit search and see the results.
So it is confirmed, the first one is ...BUSTED
Second case
The second case was someone impersonating the curie account on steemit chat. The thing is curie has an official #curie channel on steemit chat, where all cases relating to curie can be addressed.
This case was swiftly tackled because we all love curie and well the scam was so sloppy.
Luckily in this case, the person was not successfully duped of his SBD. As we can see, a lot of things are off. The English is wrong and the scammer (in his haste) forgot not to act desperate and instead was practically begging the person instead to send 20 SBD and take his votes.
Of course the curie team ( because curie is a bot) are now aware of the situation and are more vigilant.
The third case
This will be brief, there is a fake minnowbooster account on steemit chat that was banned recently, employing the same tactics as the first two also.
Taking the right steps
The first thing to do is to report to @pfunk or @firepower and have such accounts terminated with maximum prejudice, but the most important thing to do is to stop being overly desperate.
Scammers feed off greed and when you remove that, then they have nothing else. Sometimes am tempted not to feel sorry for someone who got scammed by such antics because they allowed their greed cloud their mind...tbh
So the next time you hear these words: "Hey there! I am a whale and I see you have so many nice posts, pay me 20 SBD to my bittrex account and I will give you my 100% vote worth $200 for seven of your posts." Run away and never look back.
We as a community say no to scam.
Thanks to @elyaque for the badge
First image is from pixabay.
