Goxtrade Accused of Being a Scam

In a news report on May 17, it was revealed that the so-called cryptocurrency exchange Goxtrade may actually be a scam. According to this news report, Goxtrade has used pictures of people unaffiliated with the organization from social media sites and has posted them on its website as company staff.

Fraud Alert

Goxtrade, which claims to be a trusted platform for buying and selling Bitcoins, allegedly launched its services in 2017. However, its website is just over one week old.

The so-called exchange has randomly pulled pictures off the internet, and hasn’t even bothered to change names in some cases. One such example is of Amber Baldet.

Baldet is the co-founder of blockchain startup Clovyr. She is also a well-known person in the blockchain community, and has been listed in Furtune’s 40 Under 40. Her photo and name appeared on Goxtrade’s website and she was listed as a developer with the company.

She tweeted a fraud alert about this company on Friday, May 17. Baldet posted that she was in no way affiliated with this entity and she believed that the entire business was probably a lie.

A claims specialist from Illinois, an operations manager from Melbourne and even a lawyer from Germany have been listed as employees of this company.

Even the Chief Executive Officer the digital bank Monzo, Tom Blomfield, had his picture posted on Goxtrade’s website, however the name was changed to Arnold Blomfield. He tweeted that his legal team was filing a complaint against the site.

Other Red Flags

The fake photos are not the only red flags that this company is a scam. The exchange has given its registered address on its website as Heron Tower in London. However, upon investigation, it was found that this company does not exist at the address mentioned.

Added to that, there is no record of a company called Goxtrade in the United Kingdom’s registry of businesses and companies. The registration number mentioned on the website actually belongs to a clothing company located in Birmingham, England. And this company had been dissolved over 2 years ago.

Cloudflare, the networking giant, has flagged Goxtrade’s website has a phishing site.

When the media tried to contact the company via email, it was found that the company’s email address was one that belonged to the Russian internet company called Yandex.

Crypto Scams Not Rare

This is not the first time that the legitimacy of a crypto startup has been questioned. Miroskii, another startup, was found to have collected $830,000 before it was revealed as a scam. RepuX and JoyToken was revealed on May 17 also to be scams, and have disappeared after misappropriating over $8 million of investors’ funds.