Hi Dollars scammers everywhere – beware!

Scammers – they are everywhere. And it looks like they are targeting the Hi Network and its users. And you can read my review on Hi Dollars here. Which actually makes sense as Hi seems to be gaining a lot of popularity as of late. With the launch of their Hi Dollar tokens and the ability to start trading at Uniswap, these people will come out of the woodworks. And as Hi Dollar is meant for general users who are perhaps less technically inclined (and perhaps less knowledgeable), these are the group of people who are most vulnerable. And so we have a huge explosion of scammers targeting Hi Dollar users. Furthermore with Telegram, it makes targeting Hi Dollar users so much easier. Not that I am saying social media is bad or anything, but all you have to do is to go into the Official Telegram group for the Hi Network and you can start choosing your targets just like that. They usually impersonate Hi Staff or Hi Support. There was even an fake Official Telegram group for the Hi Network as well. One hint – Hi Staff or Hi Support will NEVER contact you if you didn’t initiate it first. So they will not suddenly PM/DM you or anything asking whether you have done something out of the blue. You NEED to PM/DM them first. Their official Telegram Group can be found here. Or better yet, you should go to their website and follow the Telegram link there.

***** Note that I am not saying that the Hi Network itself is a scam. At least I hope not considering that I have parked quite a lot of funds into their Hi Dollar token. I am warning that there are scammers who are targeting Hi Network users! **** However this shows that even scammers think that Hi network has great potential too. That is overall a positive thing. Just that users should be aware of such scams.

Anyway I got contacted by someone claiming to be a Hi Official Support staff and the below is how it went. Note that this is a fake account.

So we have an account that DM me asking me whether I got approved for KYC. And the account name is “hi_official Support”. This is a fake account. If it is real, the account name should be “hi official Support” without the underscore. Anyway the person did sound friendly and sincere and did not really ask for anything personal or confidential so I played along. I replied yes it has been verified. And now comes the kicker – he or she is asking me whether I have claimed my airdrop. This is where the actual scam begin. So I pretended not to know anything and said no. And he/she proceed to guide me on how to claim my airdrop.

I forgot that they need a wallet in order to draw funds from it so I replied that I am using the Hi Dollar Web application. In which he told me that they need to have a web wallet so I continued with the entire scam with those stuff about gas fees and what-not. This can be interesting.

So next they gave me a website (warning – do not click on that or go to this website! This is a scam!) in which it is supposed to be received and they will automatically connect to my wallet. This is something which you should NEVER do via some random person’s link, especially if the person sending you the link is not someone you can verify or trust.

I am supposed to get 20% more of the volume I am currently holding in the wallet. Which is obviously a big big red flag. Just imagine if Vitaly was the one who decided that he need 20% more of what he is holding in his wallet. How will this airdrop be able to vomit out that kind of ETH? So basically he/she wants you to send all of your cryptocurrency holdings to the ERC20 wallet so that they can drain it all away when you connect your wallet to that site. Remember that includes Hi Dollars as it is also an ERC20 token (at the moment). And as you can see, he/she is also trying to get their victims to put in more tokens into the wallet (asking me to transfer to purchase more ETH). This means more crypto for them to drain out.

And that is the end. I think the account got banned because I never heard from him/her again. At least we know Telegram responds to reporting. But this also shows that scammers are very much aware of new projects coming out. I mean the Hi Network is still a pretty young project and there are already very elaborate schemes to scam users. Yes I know that it is generally not that difficult to start accounts in Telegram or even start a Telegram group but the thought of it is kind of scary. I am guessing why scams are so common nowadays is because scammers tend to get away with it without any consequences. Even that American pipeline hack, the hackers didn’t seen to get caught or arrested even though the most of the funds were returned.

Anyway guys, take care. Please be aware of such schemes. You need to be careful when responding to people on the Internet and that includes on social media or via email or just though an advertisement. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And never share your personal information on the Internet. Check out some tips on avoiding such crypto scams.