I’m not happy with this response. Something needs to be done. I could careless if it was just for me alone but I told families and friends who I persistently convinced to join and believed in the Cardona project to tune into Charles’s youtube channel. I asked them to send their ADA Coin to support the program only to discovered it was a scam. How could Charles Hoskinson allow his youtube channel to be cloned and used to defraud the very people that supported him? I’m highly disappointed. I’m also being accused of an elaborate scam I knew nothing about. How could you guys do this to me? Something needs to be done because a mere apology is not enough especially when you consider the fact that it was Charles’s video that was used. It was him talking live.
Im reall sorry for your loss but we are warning and educating all over our social media channels about such scams.
WELCOME @barinedeezia 
I am sorry to hear about the loss to potentially yourself and others you care about. 
The Cardano community is fully aware of such scams. I report the scams every time I see them.
It is helpful to keep in mind that Cardano is not the only community affected by these types of scams.
Recently, I have seen the same scam (livestreem scam) for both Dogecoin and Ethereum. Similar Ethereum scams have been broadcasted for almost a year.
I totally agree with you! 
Something needs to be done. The crypto scene is slowing changing from the “Wild West” to something more stable.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention! You are not alone and will likely not be the last one, for the time being.
How could Charles Hoskinson allow his youtube channel to be cloned and used to defraud the very people that supported him?
He doesn’t. But there’s not much he can do about it, since anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can edit fake videos and create a YT channel, and the more savvy ones will knock out some pretty convincing deepfakes too. They can put these things up faster than they can be reported and blocked.
It was him talking live.
No, it wasn’t. See previous point.
I feel for you, and I get that you’re angry and upset right now – who wouldn’t be. But sorry, this isn’t on Charles or the Cardano community.
I’ve received e-mails from Bill Gates telling me he’ll throw some billions my way if I give him my bank account info, I’ve won the “Google lottery” countless times, and every hot babe from Vilnius to Bangkok wants to come over and bang me senseless if I’ll just send her money for an airplane ticket (and then some).
As far as I’m concerned, Charles Hoskinson personally telling me to send him all my ADA and he’ll give me back twice the amount falls under the same category. Unless and until I’ve been given some very, verrry convincing reasons why he’d ever do that, and then done my due diligence, I won’t even consider parting with a single lovelace. I can be scammed as much as the next guy, but I’m not going to make it quick or easy.
You learned a painful and (hopefully not too) expensive lesson. Unfortunately your chances of seeing those ADA back are slim to none. But always remember:
“When something sounds too good to be true…”
You’re not alone. That said and considering the ever-growing number of scams diverting Charles Hoskinson videos for scam & profit, that deserves the full attention of the CF. I’m not saying they’re liable, of course not, but if anything, this story is one more proof that relying on prevention and common sense alone does not always suffice.
True. I’ve been away for a while and these scams seem to be ramping up something fierce lately; hadn’t spotted all the similar threads before replying in this one…
Last I heard IOHK was looking for someone with a legal background to start focusing on this problem. And it’ll be up to the community to do their part – help raise awareness, and support the people who fall prey to a scammer anyway. Some are harder to fool than others, but none of us are 100% immune.
So my previous post may have been a little harsh, but still… the first step to recovery is owning one’s mistakes. Especially in crypto, where personal reponsibility is everything…
Sorry to hear this still is happening, but people need to do their research, and even some seasoned traders get scammed. I Hope some how by the lesson learnt, you somehow better can educate many others on Cardano and investing in Ada by staking.
You’re absolutely right. And that would be a great intiative indeed, but after the fact, the community can usually only go as far as reporting ; maybe a simple form, or an email address with a template would go a long way to gather and centralize actionable information. Law enforcement is still needed to take down the responsible individuals or groups. So instead of having sparse reports of variable usefulness, we could rely on the CF to collect the said reports and have this one individual with legal background as a point person for law enforcement. Every machine needs its simple cogs (like us) and bits of information.
Sorry to hear, yet i think there was greed involved in the decision to send ADA to a place that is linked on youtube. Was it the send 1 get 2 back? There are hundrets of warnings in reddit/forum/comments. Verify first, then act.
This happened to me with scam app in the Google Play Store as well. Over 30k ADA stolen. If Cardano would simply create legitimate app for one of the large app stores in the world this would not happen.
So far all I’m being told is welcome to DeFi.
I am starting up a lawsuit against Google. They should be held accountable for the fraudulent apps they continue to allow to run rampant in their Play Store. Their approval algorithm is clearly flawed.
Cmon Cardano… get a Google Play Store App going and prevent so many of your followers from being ripped off. Continue to be a good fiduciary and get this done. You can’t continue to let this risk run about.
There are other class action suits happening against other cryptos for not doing a better job of protecting their customers. This is something that you can help control.
No matter how hard I try I cannot find a scam wallet on google play.
There is Yoroi by Emurgo and it is legit.
Its because we were successful in getting it taken down. There are others. I just reported WalletConnect also.
Well, greed is part of human nature. Unless you’re a priest or a monk who made a vow of poverty can you really say that none of your decisions at all has been based on greed ? When you bought your first Ada didn’t you hope it would go just a bit higher ? That’s greed. It’s easy to blame victims. Did they make a mistake ? Yes. Did they deserve to lose everything for it ? I don’t think so.
I’m all for IOHK providing an iOS/Android version of Daedalus, but this won’t stop scammers from seeding app stores with fraudulent apps.
Same with sueing Google, Apple, YouTube e.a. for enabling scammers. It’s useful & necessary, if only to draw a clear line for these often predatory entities, but in the end the problem isn’t simply the tech — the weakest link will always be the primate holding the device.
None of us are 100% immune to getting scammed. There’s no chance I personally would fall for the “double your ADA” scam, but a fake app might possibly fool me at some point. Which is why, especially in crypto, I don’t install anything until I’ve checked several other sources, and made damn sure it’s 100% legit. But sooner or later someone will outsmart me too. Which is why I also compartimentalize my assets, so they’ll only be able to make off with a limited amount and the biggest blow will only be to my ego 
Too many people come into this scene all wide-eyed and looking to get a piece of those insane profits they read about in the news, without planning or due diligence, and in their greed (or just eagerness) they throw basic caution to the wind. And they get eaten…
It’s a tough one, because we’ll never reach everyone in time. But it’s worth thinking about what we can do increase awareness and promote good security practice.
I personally know one person who wanted to “get rich” and got himself a bank loan to buy crypto. It worked out for him (so far). I’ve been trying to make it clear to him how incredibly effing lucky he got (so far…) but I’m afraid he’s going to have to get himself burned at least once before it really sinks in.
(Somewhat unrelated, but as a longtime EVE Online player I’d recommend anyone looking to get into crypto to play that game for a few months first. The currency is fake, but boy does it help cultivate the right mindset for surviving in crypto )
/rant
Sure, prevention and awareness raising still need to be thought of. However it will not be of any more help to the victims coming here than blaming them.
My point is that when someone has been stolen it’s the least we can do to try helping them instead of just adding more guilt and shame. As @eliezeroz suggested, the CipherTrace defenders league might be useful in some cases and I do believe it’s worth a try.
As for the person you know (the bank loan guy), if he gets burned, then it’s on him and him only, there is apparently no third party involved.
Hey sorry for your bad experience I’m a victim myself and I would advise you not to reply to raph_cardano because he is here to dismissed victims such as you.
People have started working on how blockchain companies would be responsible for a direct scam on their platforms that cause people like you to suffer.
We are working with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and other lawmakers to forced blockchain companies to carry insurance that would cover and protect vulnerable people like you.
The question is not whether it will happen, but when. The only thing you can do is to share your stories with many laws makers on Twitter. Share as many as you can.
You can see from the message thread here that Cardona has resulted in victim-blaming using people such as raph_cardano as the offensive weapon.
You can not get your money back, but you can fight back by sharing your stories
People to twit
https://twitter.com/marcorubio
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC
https://twitter.com/SenSanders
https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi
https://twitter.com/RepHorsford
https://twitter.com/RepSlotkin
17 May
You can not get your money back, but you can fight back by sharing your stories
People to twit
https://twitter.com/marcorubio
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC
https://twitter.com/SenSanders
https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi
https://twitter.com/RepHorsford
Wow!
I’m really intrigued by this topic. And I’m sorry if the following is going to sound harsh but this is my view on these things so bare with me.
Firstly I’m sorry for your loss.
Secondly, I saw this video on saturday and thought to myself, wow, how cool, charles is giving away ada.
So i looked at my wallet and thought, wow, my goal will be reached sooner than i thought.
However, my alarm bells went off and before i send money to some internet account my brain and common sense told me to start digging.
First I carefully inspected the linked homepage. Since there was no impressum or contact option, this was already a huge red flag.
Then i asked my friend google about a ADA giveway and i landed on different reddit and other forum threads with huge titles like SCAM, carefull bla bla.
So I started reading those threads and learned that the same thing was done months before in the EXACT same manner. Professional website and professional video where charles is talking. And they have obiously tried this several times before.
The last thing I did was to went to twitter and looked up Cardano Foundation (which was the name of channel where the video was running) and immediately saw that on YT foundation was written within those brackets: [ ]. Also there was no sign or mention of any giveaway at all on their site.
So, ofcourse I was dissapointed to not get any free ada, but I immediatly did 3 things:
- Report the video on youtube as SCAM.
- Sent the link to the video to my friends and colleagues and instructed them to report it to YT.
- Went on twitter and informed the Cardano foundation that there is someone using their name to actively scam people. - Never got a reply but at least a few hours later the video was taken offline.
Since your money is already gone, I can only strongly advise that next time you at least go to google and research if there is some official announcment regarding the topic you’re looking to get into.
BR
RoB
Sorry if you felt hurt when I said you made a mistake, but as others said before me, the first step is maybe owning to it like many other victims instead of looking for scapegoats. I despise scammers, for me, they’re the culprit, not the CF or Charles Hoskinson as you suggested, and I wish I could have been of more help to you. Anyway I wish you all the best in your quest.
You might want to turn to CipherTrace Defenders League, no guarantee, but you could possibly get a better result. And no, I’m not CipherTrace weapon either.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m in no way affiliated to the Cardano Foundation. My nickname was supposed to be raph but since it was too short for the system, I added «_cardano» suffix. Admins and CF officials are clearly identified as such on the forum. A bit more research could have saved you from proffering such unfounded accusations. As for the «victim-blaming», no need to dignify that with an answer. Good luck to you.
Thanks,
I am doing all that I can to get my money back or see those people in prison.
There are some platforms that take care about this type of scam. The police has been supportive which is the most important (law enforcement).
I wonder if all the victims can get together and file a case against YouTube.