Fake messages from the support service are a common technique of scammers in the field of cryptocurrencies and NFT. For example, if you have difficulties working on a popular P2P platform and you have asked a question on social networks, a scammer can impersonate a representative of a P2P exchange and offer help. It will then redirect you to a fake website that looks no different from the real one and convince you to enter your credentials or cryptocurrency wallet details. This way your confidential information will be transferred to the attacker.

In order not to become a victim of deception, seek help only from official representatives of the P2P exchange and carefully check the domain of the site. Sometimes attackers also send fake security threat messages by email or SMS. There is only one way to protect against them: do not click on the links until you verify the authenticity of the source.

When concluding a P2P transaction, you also need to carefully check the information that the counterparty sends you. A scammer can send a fake screenshot, allegedly he fulfilled his part of the deal, and demand that you fulfill yours. If you do this without checking whether the funds have actually been received, you may lose your money without receiving anything in return.

In order not to fall for the bait of intruders during P2P transactions, always check your bank account or cryptocurrency wallet. Allow the transfer only after you are sure that you have actually received the required amount. Never transfer funds solely on the basis of receipts.

Sometimes an attacker can try to cancel a P2P transaction after it takes place. For example, he can call his bank and claim that the transfer amount is incorrect or someone has gained unauthorized access to his account. In this case, the seller of the cryptocurrency will lose the transferred funds. Moreover, scammers can use threats to force him not to report the cancellation of the transaction to law enforcement agencies.

Do not let yourself be intimidated: collect evidence (for example, screenshots) of your correspondence and transactions with the scammer.

On some P2P platforms, there is a refund function that can be used by scammers. After completing the P2P transaction, the attacker can submit a request for a refund and indicate that he did not give permission for the transfer of funds. He may claim that the transaction was erroneous or even fraudulent in order to achieve the cancellation of the initial payment. As in the case of fake receipts, the seller can confirm the transaction in a hurry without making sure that the funds have been credited to the account.

Get into the habit of taking screenshots of all transactions to prove that they were made, if necessary. This will speed up the appeal process if you have to contact customer support in connection with fraud.

Attackers may try to pay with a check that cannot be cashed due to a lack of funds in the account, or simply cancel the check after invoicing. To protect users, Binance P2P and STARK INVEST s.r.o. does not support payment by checks, as this method is associated with increased risk and uncertainty. Never accept payment by check and check whether the counterparty has sent a check instead of paying using the method specified in the ad.

A common fraudulent scheme in P2P markets:

• Two traders are responding to your ad at the same time.
• Both make an application for the same amount, for example, 1,000 EUR (in fact, this is one person, but you do not know this for sure). This situation should already be alerted from the very beginning.
• During the transaction, one of the accounts transfers 1,000 EUR to you, and both of them click confirmation that they transferred the money.
• You see the receipt and release the cryptocurrency. If you did this by choosing the wrong account, you will lose the cryptocurrency, because a fraudster from the second account can open a dispute, and in this case you will be wrong, because he transferred money to you, and you did not transfer the cryptocurrency to him.

It is necessary to carefully check which accounts the money is being transferred from. There and confirm. And for the other, the deal will be canceled because you could not be deceived.

A more cunning scheme is when the amounts are not the same, but different:

• You are selling cryptocurrency for a total of 10,000 EUR.
• Two orders are being received. One for 2,000 EUR, the second for 5,000 EUR.
• You can see that your bank account is replenished with 2,000 EUR and at the same time the account where this amount is set checks that you have paid.
• Seeing that 2,000 EUR has arrived, you release the cryptocurrency to the person with whom you have the corresponding order.
• Then you receive another 2,000, and already the account with an order for 5,000 ticks the box. It turned out that this person transferred the first 2,000, and now he is waiting for his cryptocurrency. And you no longer have the crypt, because you released it to the first user.

Of course, both accounts are most likely managed by the same person. And thanks to this scheme, he "earned" cryptocurrency out of the blue. Again, attentiveness will protect you from this type of divorce. Also, in the terms of the transaction, write that you accept payment in only one payment.

A person opens a deal with you on a P2P platform, after which he sends a confirmation that he has paid for the application, although he does not actually do so. He does not do anything else and does not communicate with you.

What is being achieved by this? For example, it may be competitors. While you are waiting for the deal to be unblocked (usually 15-30 minutes), they are actively trading, depriving you of potential profits.

In such a situation, you need to open a dispute, write in support of the exchange. The administration will figure it out and take action against the fraudster.

There are quite a few P2P platforms on the market, and they are time-tested, reliable and have a good reputation. For example:

• Binance P2P
• ByBit P2P
• OKX P2P
• Huobi P2P
• BingX P2P

It is better to choose arbitration sites among them. But there are new sites with favorable conditions at first glance, which need to be treated with caution. What should alert you: the lack of an escrow system (escrow is mandatory for every p2p exchange), bad reviews, lack of accounts in social networks, lack of an SSL certificate from the site.

This includes two main options:

• "Honest buyer". You have been working with a counterparty for a very long time, you have conducted 50 or more transactions with him. And at some point, he asks you to meet him halfway - transfer the cryptocurrency, and he will give the money later, etc. This is almost certainly a divorce, a person has been deliberately insinuating himself into trust for a long time in order to deceive at a certain moment.
• Friendly/romantic relationships. Emotions can greatly weaken caution. Scammers often get to know their victims on dating sites or on apps like Tinder. Then they communicate for a long time, form an emotional attachment, and then, under appropriate circumstances, cheat and steal money.

In this regard, any relationship on the Internet is generally a dangerous area, you do not know what is sitting on the other side of the screen and what his thoughts are, but you can only receive the information that he allows you to receive.

A person contacts you and offers to conduct a transaction through Telegram or another network at a more favorable rate than you have on the stock exchange. Allegedly, in order not to pay a commission to the exchange or for other reasons. Sometimes, in order to gain trust, he promises to transfer money first. In this case, most likely, he will throw off some kind of his own website or exchanger, which will be fraudulent.

You need to trade exclusively on exchanges, and verified ones. There, even if you encounter fraud, you can write to support. Outside the exchange, there is no one to ask for help.

There is another point, if the bank has blocked the card (and this often happens in P2P arbitration), then you need to attach reports on transactions from the exchange to unlock it. If you trade outside the exchange, you will not have such reports.

A fraudster can post an ad on any platform designed for these purposes and convince the buyer to send him an advance payment there. The scammer then contacts you via the p2p platform and receives your details. These details are sent to the buyer on the original platform where the ad was placed, he transfers the money to you. And you send a cryptocurrency to a scammer.

In this way, the attackers cash out the money obtained by criminal means. At this time, you become "extreme" because you received money from the deceived person to your personal card.

To combat such schemes, exchanges introduce rules for verifying accounts and adding payment methods (cards, wallets) issued in the same name. That is, the situation with payment from someone else's card, which does not belong to the counterparty, is actually excluded. If you make an exchange outside the exchange (although this is not recommended), then you can ask the counterparty to take a picture of his card against the background of the open transaction screen, and write something like "I repay the debt" in the note to the transfer.

Trading with you on the P2P market, a person, of course, receives your details. After that, it may try to make payments from your card on different sites. He will not be able to do this without SMS confirmation, so you will receive SMS with codes.

Your task is not to tell anyone any codes, since this is 100% fraud, it's not for nothing that they almost always write in SMS confirmations that the code cannot be transmitted to anyone.

It seems that everyone knows this, but sometimes they fall for the bait if the counterparty asks for any code from the SMS, allegedly without this he cannot transfer money to you.

For example, you have to transfer 18,211.23 EUR. Instead, the amount of 1821.23 is received. In a hurry (which often happens during arbitration), you may not notice and confirm the payment. There are also options for sending another currency. For example, crediting in USD instead of EUR.

Therefore, once again, constant vigilance. Check all amounts up to each decimal point, and not by SMS, but in the bank/wallet application.

Telegram messenger is good for its privacy, but it also has a disadvantage – it is literally teeming with scammers, including for arbitrage trading on P2P.

Sometimes you can get a message like: "Arbitration bundle for Spain. Binance Exchange. The spread is 15%. The lap time is five minutes. A guarantor is possible. Write in private messages." Such suggestions should be treated with caution, or even better, they should be ignored altogether. Such a high spread is almost never found, at least within the European Union. The average spread is 2-5%, that is, that's how much you can earn from a circle, or even less.

Agreeing to a guarantor is also not a sign of honesty. Some well-known person in this field should act as a guarantor, but there is no difficulty in creating a fake account for him.