Peer-to-peer scam me my dear

Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchanges are sometimes a good option to buy crypto, especially if you want to have a little discount or use certain payment method for your personal convenience. And as soon as it involves a (pseudo-)anonymous counter-agent online, you are guaranteed by the exchange service but only if you stick to the rules. If you do not, chances are you could be lead into a scheme which would make you a victim and you will lose an otherwise legitimate dispute or claim.

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Cryptocurrency scam schemes: following the money

The most illustrative part of crypto scam investigation is visualizing the flow of funds through transactions and addresses associated with a scammer’s wallet. This method allows us to reveal related addresses or their clusters and also to track funds to certain centralized exchanges where they can be potentially cashed out. Additionally, we can also include in the graph other entities related to scammer in order to create a full picture.

We will approach this task using two different investigation tools: Maltego CE and GraphSense. Both tools are available for free in non-commercial versions.

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