The tale of the defeated scammer in the obscure crypto currency world.
I am Nicolas Choukroun the author of the FRANC crypto currency, and our project is listed at CREX24, a crypto exchange.
I decided to write this story, because, this time, it shows that scammers are not always the winners. Good people can join together and defeat the scam even in the anonymity of the crypto world.
It also shows the difference between blockchains and tokens.
I will spoil the end, @AlexM, one of our investors, got his 5 millions Francs back in less than 24 hours, thanks to the quick action of the exchange CREX24 and the FRANC community.
Here is what exactly did happened.
The 9th of April 2021, @AlexM contacted me saying on Discord:
“Oh f##k are we having a scammer?? Did you just write me with another @thewolf account on discord?? Nice somebody just fooled me with your account name and foto
I sended 5 mit franc to this a*hole.
TCYDvAx1FSc8xoixAZJqTkztybG5CHrTDT
Can you see if he scammed others?”
My name at Discord is @TheWolf and someone else had created an account with the same name and the same avatar and convinced @AlexM to send him 5 millions FRANC under a false pretext.
The transaction is here at Tronscan:
https://tronscan.io/#/transaction/773ff5f4454ed779eb0b6d227f5d1c2e05030c655f1821854ac54b267334b53e
I know @AlexM for 2 years, he is a member of our Fighter club, a club of investors who are staking more than 5 Million Francs each, and he is supporting my projects since the Franc was called Kryptofranc and had its own blockchain two years ago.
I knew the scammer too, he asked me a couple of days ago to activate his Tron wallet by sending 0.1 TRX. I was nice enough to give him 100 Francs as a bonus!
The scammer had moved his 5 millions to the CREX24 exchange which has a total of 350+ Millions of FRANC in trading, so it wasn’t possible for me to lock the scammer’s address by using the blacklist feature of the FRANC token.
That’s the advantage of the smart contracts TRC20 (on the Tron chain) or ERC20 (on the Ethereum chain) over a blockchain. You can, — if you have implemented that in your token - blacklist addresses and burn coins. I did this for FRANC, knowing that because the Franc will be used in a very popular game / social networking platform named W.O.K, this will be very difficult to avoid hackers and scammers, so we better have the tool to fight fraud.
The transaction showing that the money was sent to CREX24 is here:
Transaction: https://tronscan.io/#/transaction/f1ce9d64d55e0948864b449076c7692346fa44f0dd2f30866eacb71be457a0c5
I contacted CREX24, immediately. It is a small exchange compared with the big ones, but they are handling problems very professionally. Their support is usually fast.
I explained the problem and I suggested that these 5 Millions would be pushed out of CREX24 so that I could handle the issue with the smart contract and its blocking features, taking the full responsibility.
We had no expectation about what CREX would do.
In the meantime, @Kriss who is one of the most important investor in our project suggested that the community collect together the 5 millions so that this story would not end with the scammer winning again.
If you are doing crypto for a long time, you must have been scammed already. It happened 2 times to me, so I am not here to judge others, I can understand that even the smartest can fall for a well crafted scam. I also understand the frustration of being scammed.
@AlexM was resigned to lose his 5 Million FRANC which had a value of around $1000 at this time.
This morning, CREX24 contacted me saying that the scammer got his KYC (Know your customer) approved, and he moved the 5 Millions away from CREX24.
At this address: https://tronscan.io/#/address/TAzLVSLKBDCcvGgakQPZcgiiTuY7rvJEmv
I immediately blocked the address. Now that the funds were unable to move anywhere, I refunded @AlexM with this transaction:
https://tronscan.io/#/transaction/2df3e5a1cde4b58aea430499fc7a2ca619c671a8595c9dfe552e17173d36c3cc
The comment of the transaction, done the 10th April 2021 and saved in the Tron blockchain reads as follow: “@AlexM refund after being scammed. Thanks CREX24.”
This is the (happy) end of this story; @AlexM learned a lesson: never trust someone asking your money or crypto, even if he is looking like a friend. Also remember that Admins are written in Red in Discord, if someone contact you with the same name of an admin but his name is not in red; it is a fake account.
In any case, this story is demonstrating that when the author of a token has well designed his coin, and the exchange is acting quickly, then scammers can be defeated, even in the “obscure secrecy of the crypto currency world”!
Our Discord is : https://discord.gg/7qscn6S
Our Telegram is: https://t.me/franccrypto
We are traded here: https://crex24.com/exchange/FRANC-ETH
The W.O.K website is here: https://wolfonlinekingdom.com
You can find Franc website here: https://franc.eu.com
