Have you heard about Bitcoin multipliers?

Professedly, they are services that multiply any Bitcoin amount you send them by several times, and return to you the total amount in a mere hours.

How do they do that? Supposedly, by taking advantage of bugs in Bitcoin clients and ventures:

And why do they do that (and don’t take any commission)? Apparently, they believe in the technology and want to see it thrive.

Scamming uninformed and greedy users

Most users who encounter such an offer will see it for what it is: a scam. Unfortunately, there are also those who will be too blinded by greed to critically assess the legitimacy of these claims, or with a poor grasp of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin making the claims ring true.

And these scammers are actively making sure that this type of users finds their way to their bogus sites, by poisoning search results for “Bitcoin multiplier” and using online ads.

Once the potential victims are there, they are usually faced with more or less professional looking sites, laden with bogus indicators that are supposed to inspire confidence (see bottom of screenshot):

The site also offers “proof” that the scheme has worked for previous users: a list of previous payments they’ve supposedly sent back to the “investors.” Needless to say, the information provided is also bogus.

“Sadly, many people have fallen for this scam and have never seen their money again. The criminals behind this are setting up temporary websites and keep on resurfacing after they have been taken down,” says Malwarebytes analyst Jerome Segura.

“The best piece of advice we can give you is to stay away from too good to be true promises, especially when it involves something like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. And if you need any more guidance, the answer to the million dollar question is: No, there are no genuine Bitcoin multipliers.”