Grazvis1 scammed for $20,000
Getting scammed is nothing anybody wants to experience, however, that’s exactly what happened to Grazvis1. The high stakes player created a thread on 2+2 and let fellow poker players know about a new type of online scam.
Grazvis1, who is a well-respected and long time high stakes online player was looking for a trade in a Skype trading chat. A person who was impersonating James Romero approached him and told him that he was interested in doing the trade.
That’s apparently exactly when it went downhill for him. According to him a fake James Romero and fake Grazvydas created almost identical clone Skype accounts and approached the real ones.
Who is impersonating James Romero?
The fake James Romero and fake Grazvis1 made a plan for the actual trade with the real persons where if the real James Romero got an HV, the real Grazvydas would send $20k in return for $20k in BTC at Natural8.
The fake Grazvis1 would ask for $20k in BTC from the actual James Romero while the fake James Romero promised $20k at Natural8 for the real Grazvis cash.
The real James Romero would then ask a friend for an HV, the friend posted the HV and upon seeing it the real Grazvydas would send $20k to the real James Romero.
Once the real Romero received the funds, he would then send the $20k in BTC to the fake Grazvydas. The actual Grazvydas would then end up without his $20k at Natural8 and would go ahead and contact the real Romero to figure out what happened.
Other player’s takes
Overall, it’s a pretty innovative type of scam that actually takes a lot of criminal energy to pull off. Even Mike McDonald shared his thoughts on this matter.
I had a slightly different but similar experience. I got an email about a transfer sent to me on stars while in australia around AM. Got a Skype msg from "reg" saying he spoke to an impersonator of me trying to trade PS for AUD and when the scammer requested it sent to not my acc
— Alex Foxen (@WAFoxen) September 20, 2020
However, it seems that that’s not the first case of such a scam. Alex Foxen was quick to reply and reported about an email sent by a “reg” that he spoke to an impersonator of him.
he sent to mine instead because he knew it was mine and felt more comfortable (obv doesn't make sense but I had the funds in my account and was playing big stuff all day everyday so I didn't think much) the fake reg then said he desperately needed liquidity and being in AUS I
— Alex Foxen (@WAFoxen) September 20, 2020
Max Silver was also impressed by that scam:
thats a good one
— Max Silver (@max_silver) September 20, 2020
Meanwhile, James Romero tweeted that he would be sending Grazvydas $10k and therefore they would be splitting the loss.
https://twitter.com/skielanskis/status/1307528464359198721
It seems like the poker community was fairly impressed by that move and many praised that behavior.
Even though it remains unclear who is actually to blame in this particular case. This new type of scam is certainly very dangerous and we highly recommend to actually trade only with people you actually know.
If you are uncertain if it’s the actual person you want to trade with, you could go ahead and start a video call to confirm his identity.
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