Crypto Scams Uncovered – Goxtrade, RepoX, And JoyToken

Crypto winter seems to be over. The bulls moved back in. The flash crash of the last few days more than 30 billion loss of market capitalization within a few hours will not change anything about this. A correction was to be expected after the sharp rise in the share price in recent weeks. With the crypto bulls, the crypto scammers will also return and focus on cryptoassets with their scams. Three of these crypto-scams have been uncovered in the last few days.

GoxTrade Exchange Scam

TechCrunch exposed this crypto scam recently. Goxtrade bills itself as a “trusted platform for trading bitcoins,” but the team members presented on its website are evidently not working for the crypto exchange. TechCrunch uncovered that the team member photos were taken from social media profiles and other company websites not associated with the company.

The alleged exchange, which claimed to debut in 2017 but its domain was registered only two weeks ago. Cloudflare meanwhile flagged the site as a phishing site. According to the GoxTrade terms, the crypto exchange would be operated by a goxtrade Finance LLP registed in UK with the company no OC393265. Evidently, the company doesn’t exist.

Investor warning – stay away from GoxTrade (www.goxtrade.com).

RepuX and JoyToken ICO Scam

TheNextWeb reported on an ICO scam which allegedly ripped off crypto investors and conned over $8 million from them. According to the facts known so far, the two crypto startups RepuX and JoyToken have cheated investors by 4.7 million and 3.3 million in their respective ICOs in March/April 2018. It was revealed that their UK companies Repux Payment Limited and Joy Payment Limited were dissolved in May 2019. Evidently, both ICOs have been done by the very same British perpetrators.

Both companies have been owned and controlled by an Andrew Peter MacDonald, a British citizen born in April 1981. He was also appointed a director in both companies on Dec 5, 2017. Another British citizen, Nathen Harold Lockett born in Jan 1991, was also appointed a director in both companies on Dec 5, 2017, and allegedly acted as their COO. Locket held 10% of the shares in both companies. A Nathen Lockett presents himself as a CRM consultant for PlayCosmo Casino on LinkedIn.

You can see MacDonald in this video from Blockchain Expo North America Santa Clara 2017:

RepuX claimed that it worked on a so-called “blockchain-powered data marketplace,” while JoyToken was trying to create a decentralized gambling platform, powered by its own JOY token. Interestingly, the startups shared numerous connections, advisors, and marketing partners.

Both projects were represented by AmaZix, a marketing agency that specializes in promoting ICOs and blockchain startups. AmaZix first began working with RepuX and JoyToken in December 2017 and supported them with community management. Eventually, the partnership was terminated by AmaZix in May 2018 due to “irreconcilable differences.”

All Telegram channels associated with the two ICOs have been deleted. The websites are no longer live. Their Twitter accounts wen silent last year either. RepuX’s last tweet is dated October 15, 2018, and JoyToken’s is dated July 20, 2018.

Investor warning – be aware of the perpetrators Andrew Peter MacDonalds and Nathen Harold Lockett. We included them into our list of bad actors.