Our complete guide covers every scam type in depth. This playbook is for one moment: someone has offered you a crypto opportunity and you need to decide now. Run the 10 checks below in about 10 minutes. Any two red flags means walk away.
The 10-Point Vetting Checklist
| # | Check | What to look for | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who contacted you first? | If a stranger reached out to you, it’s a scam | 1 min |
| 2 | Is the domain legitimate? | Misspellings, odd TLDs, recently registered | 1 min |
| 3 | Is the team real? | Real names, LinkedIn, track record | 1 min |
| 4 | Is there a working product? | A site and whitepaper is not a product | 1 min |
| 5 | What does the blockchain say? | Contract, holders, liquidity, honeypot | 1 min |
| 6 | Does the math make sense? | Guaranteed returns are a lie | 1 min |
| 7 | What does a search say? | “project name + scam” | 1 min |
| 8 | What do real users say? | BitcoinTalk, Reddit, Trustpilot, forums | 1 min |
| 9 | Can you get money out? | Test a small withdrawal | 1 min |
| 10 | Can you explain it? | If you can’t, you don’t understand it | 1 min |
How to Run Each Check
1. Who contacted you first. If you were DM’d about an “opportunity”, stop — legitimate projects don’t cold-message strangers.
2. Check the domain. Run a Whois lookup — a domain registered last week for a project claiming years of history is a scam. Compare the URL carefully.
3. Verify the team. Real projects have real people with a professional history on LinkedIn. Anonymous teams, stock photos, founders who never appear on camera = hard pass.
4. Test for a product. Open the app or website and try it. A landing page plus a roadmap is not a product.
5. Read the blockchain. For a token, check DexScreener or RugCheck: holder concentration, locked liquidity, sellability.
6. Run the numbers. “10x in a month”, “500% guaranteed APY”, “double your deposit” — all lies. Nobody can guarantee returns.
7. Search for complaints. Search “[name] + scam” or “[name] + reddit” — warnings surface in seconds.
8. Read the community. BitcoinTalk’s Scam Accusations board and relevant subreddits expose paid-review farms. Identical 5-star reviews are a red flag.
9. Test the exit. On any exchange, deposit a small amount and withdraw it immediately. If withdrawals require “fees” or “verification”, the money is gone.
10. Explain it out loud. If you can’t explain the investment to a friend, you shouldn’t be sending it money.
Scoring Your Results
| Red flags | Verdict |
|---|---|
| 0 | Proceed with normal caution |
| 1–2 | Pause. Deep-dive before committing anything |
| 3+ | Walk away. Don’t feed the sunk-cost instinct |
Scammers don’t beat your knowledge — they beat your time pressure. The timer forces the check before the “limited offer” closes.
You’ve Been Scammed: The Action Plan
Step 1: Stop everything
Stop sending money and stop talking to the scammer. Every “fee” to “release your funds” is another theft.
Step 2: Document everything
You’ll need this for police and exchange reports:
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Wallet addresses | Yours and the one you sent to |
| Transaction hashes | From the block explorer |
| Messages | Screenshots of chats and emails |
| Amounts and dates | What went where and when |
| Platform details | Exchange, app, website, names used |
Step 3: Secure what’s left
Create a brand-new wallet (new seed phrase) on a trusted app and move any remaining balance there. Treat the old wallet as permanently compromised.
Step 4: Freeze your accounts
Contact your exchange’s support with your documentation and ask them to freeze the receiving account. Change passwords and reset 2FA on anything you logged into while being scammed.
Step 5: Report it
| Authority | Who it’s for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Action Fraud | UK | actionfraud.police.uk |
| FBI IC3 | US | ic3.gov |
| Exchange support | The platform you used | contact them |
| Local police | Everyone | file a report |
Step 6: Warn others
Post a report on BitcoinTalk’s Scam Accusations board and any group where the scammer is active — your warning may be the only one someone sees.
Step 7: Learn the lesson
Most crypto scams are unrecoverable. Treat it as an expensive lesson: never invest what you can’t afford to lose, never trust cold contacts, and protect what you hold with a seed phrase safety plan.
Bottom Line
Ten minutes of vetting separates the gambler from the investor. Run the 10 checks, trust the score, and walk away from anything with two red flags or more. If the worst has already happened: stop, document, secure, freeze, report, warn — and never pay a “recovery service” anything.
What matters most
The twelve-minute exercise above is designed around one truth: scammers beat you with pressure, not cleverness. Every “limited offer,” countdown timer, and “act now” warning exists to stop you thinking, so the discipline that genuinely protects you is simply refusing to act in that window. Run the checks, score the result, and trust the score even when the offer feels like the chance of a lifetime. If a stranger contacted you first, you can stop there — that single fact already answers the question. And remember that two red flags is the line; you do not need to find fraud before you can walk away, only enough doubt to justify the pause.
Why the checks beat a ‘gut feeling’
An experienced investor’s instinct is useful, but it is also exactly what scammers train you to override. The checklist works because it replaces emotion with a repeatable, verifiable procedure: a Whois lookup tells you whether the domain is weeks old, a block explorer tells you whether the token is a honeypot, a search tells you whether other people have already been burned. None of these are opinions, and none of them can be talked around by a smooth seller. When your gut says “this feels fine” but the checks say otherwise, the checks are right. Building a decision on them — rather than on the urgency of the pitch — is what separates the gambler from the investor.
Keep the habit in daily life
The same scrutiny should extend beyond investment pitches to the accounts and platforms you already use. A verified badge or a famous name does not make a message safe, because accounts get taken over and brands get impersonated. Make it routine to confirm announcements through an official website you typed yourself, to hover over links before clicking, and to treat any inbound request for a seed phrase or a wallet connection as an attack regardless of how official it looks. The checks that protect you from a stranger’s pitch are the same ones that protect you from a hijacked account you already trusted.
You have been scammed — the sequence
If the worst has already happened, the order of your actions matters. Stop sending money and stop talking to the scammer, because every fee they demand to “release your funds” is another theft. Document everything you have — wallet addresses, transaction hashes, messages, amounts, and dates — because you will need it for police and exchange reports. Secure what is left by creating a brand-new wallet with a fresh seed phrase and moving any remaining balance there, treating the old one as permanently compromised. Freeze your accounts by contacting exchange support with your documentation, and change passwords and reset 2FA on anything you logged into while you were being scammed. Report to Action Fraud in the UK, the FBI IC3 in the US, or your local police, then warn others on BitcoinTalk’s Scam Accusations board or wherever the scammer is active. Finally, ignore the inevitable “recovery service”: within days someone will offer to get your funds back for an upfront fee, but a blockchain transaction cannot be reversed, and that offer is the same scammers taking a second bite.
Common questions
Q: How long should the vetting actually take? A: With practice, most of the ten checks take about a minute each, so the whole pass can be done in around ten minutes. The important thing is not the exact time but that you complete the checks before the offer’s pressure has passed, because the urgency window is exactly when scammers want you to skip them.
Q: What single check matters most? A: If you take only one, make it this: who contacted you first? A stranger reaching out to you is the defining signature of almost every crypto scam. Everything else — a suspicious domain, an anonymous team, guaranteed returns — is additional confirmation on top of that first, decisive signal.
Q: Can the funds I sent ever be recovered? A: In most cases the money is lost, because legitimate recovery from a draining or platform scam is rare. Your realistic priorities are securing what remains, reporting so that others can be warned, and refusing to lose more to a secondary “recovery” scam that promises to get your funds back for a fee.