Beware: Scammers on Steemit.chat

There has been many attempts to convince people to send their valuebale Steem and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD) in exchange for a series of large upvotes (or "up my vote"). Many people were approached by a buildawhale impersonator. Beware of any such pay for upvotes, especially the ones where they request you send the money (crypto) to another address other than the account it self.

This is similar to how scammers will call and threaten you about owed money to the IRS or many other organizations. This is what the IRS says in regard to this:

REMEMBER: The IRS doesn't initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text messages or social media channels to request personal or financial information. In addition, IRS does not threaten taxpayers with lawsuits, imprisonment or other enforcement action. Recognizing these telltale signs of a phishing or tax scam could save you from becoming a victim.

This is similar to buildawhale and many other large account holders. It is unlikely that they will ever contact you on steemit.chat or discord, especially not asking for a transfer of money and NEVER to bittrex or polo or any other third party.

So this is where my adventure begins. I was approached by a peaceandlove account on Steemit.chat. I knew already that this was a scam account from the beginning.

I tried to play dumb and write as incorrectly as the subject to make them think that I was a good victim and that I couldn't be playing them. But of course I was.

Using bad grammar and spelling I tried to convince him that I just couldn't use bittrix. I made it clear that it wasn't an option. He was clueless. All he wanted was to make a few bucks.

"If you do not want to send to my bittrex, I will not up your vote." Playing hard to get ehh? Dont want to up my vote ehh?

Since I am not going to send any money, I might as well just keep saying I wont send to bittrix and see if he will offer another option. Maybe, just maybe he will bite.

MUAHAHA..He bit. Account name Hive account@panopticalvia it is. Let the investigation begin. This is actually an almost inactive account held by a perpetual scammer, only powering down at this point. The account was created over a year ago with the Steem account creation process so no other leads there. Nothing new and most likely the same person pretending to be many account holders on steemit.chat selling "up my votes."

After making this scam know in a chat that I participate in I found out that another person that I know was just approached by this scammer. Thanks to Hive account@gandalf for banning this account so that he cannot use this particular steemit name to take advantage of others. He banned another scam account at the same time.