Secretly recorded footage of a scam in action reveals how phony investors conned a startup and drained its cryptocurrency wallet of almost $50k.
Around the world, crypto scams are on the rise. Over the past year, people living in the UK lost almost £200m to such schemes, according to recent figures published by communications consultancy Mattison.
Last year, a Sifted investigation exclusively revealed how crypto scammers had been targeting startup founders and investors across Europe, posing as investors and persuading victims to hand over thousands of dollars’ worth of crypto before vanishing.
Daniel Veidlinger, an angel investor, shared secretly-recorded footage of the scam in action with Sifted, offering fresh insight into how the con artists operate.
In the video, Veidlinger can be seen being persuaded into handing over $50,000 worth of Tether instead of the intended 0.049977 (the equivalent of five cents), thinking he was sending the much smaller amount as a test transaction.
Reviewing the footage with Sifted, Veidlinger pinpointed the moment he scanned a QR code, connecting him to the receiving wallet, and a decimal point disappeared without warning. In the video, the phony investors pressuring Veidlinger to keep the phone facing away from him.
“I didn’t feel as bad after I figured out what had happened, because anybody on earth would be fooled by something like this,” says Veidlinger.
Since Sifted published its investigation last May, another 10 startups have come forward with reports of similar scams. Of the 17 startups, five lost money — with stolen sums ranging from $50k to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Malicious QR codes
Last June, the bogus investors reached out to a startup in Veidlinger’s portfolio — which has asked to remain anonymous for fear of missing out on future business deals — claiming to be representatives of Tesalia Asset Management (TAM), a single-family office in Luxembourg.
TAM’s supposed portfolio manager Robert Maximillian Getty claimed to be the son of the Getty oil family and the family behind Miller Duty Free Shoppers.
As of today, TAM has now been flagged by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the main financial regulatory authority in Luxembourg, with a warning concerning “fraudulent activities”. Sifted tried to contact TAM but received no response.
Veidlinger also reached out to Atomic Wallet, the crypto wallet the fake investors requested he use, after he was scammed last September.
In an email seen by Sifted, Atomic Wallet said that its team is “aware of the potential malicious use of QR codes” and is “actively working on addressing this issue” to be resolved in future releases. Atomic Wallet did not respond to a request for comment.
Other founders and investors who fell victim to similar scams tell Sifted the difficult environment for funding, combined with the embarrassment of falling for a scam, means there are likely more victims who haven’t gone public.
One investor — who was targeted twice at the end of 2024 — warns of an “increased sophistication” when it comes to such scams. He says that scammers have started using AI to make their websites look more legitimate, as well as the names of real companies, often either inactive or dissolved, and setting up LinkedIn accounts to further bypass initial due diligence.
“They are setting up websites which in hindsight are AI generated but if you look at them initially you don’t know,” he says. “If you’re just a company without advice, it’s hard to withstand the lure of easy money.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/crypto-scam-startups-investor-tether-con/
