We were contacted by a client who had invested nearly $30,000 in Tether (USDT) through the crypto broker Invexeo, but was unable to access his funds.

He’d used Invexeo to buy Tether on his behalf and then deposit it into a Coinbase wallet for him.

Our client could see that the tokens were present in his wallet, however, he couldn’t withdraw them. When he contacted Invexeo, they continuously fobbed him off. He became increasingly nervous as Invexeo stated that he’d need to invest another £1,500, then £3,000 then finally £6,500 in order to release his funds.

Scam USDTETHER InvexeoAfter a discussion with the customer we accessed his Coinbase wallet and saw that he held $30,000 USDTETHER tokens. This was an immediate red flag as Coinbase lists Tether as Tether USDT. So what was this USDTETHER token we were seeing? Research suggested that Invexeo had created a false token which they called USDTETHER and deposited ‘$30,000′ of this fake token into the customer’s Coinbase wallet, thus giving the appearance of a legitimate transaction.

Unfortunately, the slight difference between the real Tether USDT tokens and the fake USDTETHER tokens would not be realised by any investor who wasn’t very familiar with the tokens. So, our client was not aware that his money has not been invested in Tether but had been stolen and the fake tokens used to give the appearance of a legitimate investment in cryptocurrency.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority knows about Invexeo and reports them as a scam company that operate in the UK without a licence. (See the FCA webpage here: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/warnings/invexeo and the Invexeo site here: https://www.invexeo.io/)

It’s only 5th February 2022 and so far this year we’ve encountered the following scams:
1. £13,000 of Dogecoin scammed from a customer who entered his seed phrases into an online crypto help site.
2. £4,600 spent investing in a scam NEWSHEEP token on the recommendation of a ‘friend’ who had done ‘very well’ out of it.
3. $30,000 fake Tether bought from a scam crypto-brokering company.

We’re keeping a running list of scams we’re contacted about throughout 2022 here: https://recovermycryptowallet.com/cryptocurrency-scams-in-2022/