If some of my readers remember, Celsius was a very popular centralized staking platform for major crypto coins that offered some very attractive staking bonuses, both as rewards as well as sign on bumps.
Celsius, a crypto asset platform, offered customers “rewards” on deposited assets, secured loans, and custody services. Marketing itself as the “safest place for your crypto,” Celsius encouraged customers to “unbank” themselves by transferring crypto assets to its platform. Celsius’s primary offering, “Earn” program, promised to deploy customer assets to generate investment returns. Celsius also provided “Custody” and “Borrow” programs, the latter allowing customers to obtain loans by posting crypto assets as collateral. (DOJ source)
Some of these were as much as $50 to $100 for investing $200 to $300 in a given coin, like BTC or USDC, etc. Of course, the entire model was propped up on a house of cards, and when Bitcoin did its tragic drop from the $120,000s down to $16,000 or so, it took a whole bunch of glass houses with it. Celsius' management and owner, Alex Mashinsky, suddenly has private financing calls on its capital funding being demanded, and the platform was holding an empty bag in terms of liquidity. Whether in panic or an already-planned exit rug, Machinsky took off with a bundle of Celsius' staked holdings in real coins and thought he got away to everyone's loss.
Eventually, however, things caught up with him. Mashinsky ended up being tried and convicted of federal fraud charges, and Celsius in bankruptcy had to claw back and cough up staked funds to the original owners. It was quite a mess, and those of us who staked, like myself, took losses, even though we got some of our money back years later. The fact that we got anything was the amazing part. Mashinsky's one big mistake was operating and staying the U.S., which ended up providing the leverage to seize his stolen funds and return them, at least what was left anyways.
It's been some four years or so since the Celsius bankrupty was finalized and the distribution of recovered funds was made. Yet, amazingly, scammers are still trying to latch onto the old story to catch a few unsuspecting crypto holders and yet again steal their funds, or at least their identity. The latest round of robo-emails involves a complaint that the recipient hasn't filed their claim and is going to lose out on further recovery from Celsius. Note, the primary recovery of Celsius went through a federal court-approved bankrupty site and then distribution happened through PayPal.
The scam tries to get a reader to click through on a made up link and provide KYC data, presumably to identify and get their claim submitted. In a classic insult to injury scam, the senders are betting there are people still dumb enough out there to turn over their key information hoping to get paid more money.
This particular approach was pretty much below kindgarten level and easily detected by simply looking at the email address from which the message was sent. I'm pretty sure unboundbabes.com has nothing to do with Celsius, rebating any lost money, or anything to do with a bankruptcy (it might take crypto as payments though, just a guess...).
So, even when you think shit is over, it still keeps coming back. Some other scammer tries to pick up the baton and keep running to steal people's money and time. Always, always check texts, emails and posts for validity and always assume they are suspicious until proven otherwise. It only takes one click, and with some of the more advanced stuff even less than that to drain a wallet now.
Past Celsius stories I wrote on this related topic:
- Finally Recovered Some of My "Lost" Money From Celsius - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-musings-consumer-impacts/finally-recovered-some-of-my-lost-money-from-celsius-xnkjygo
- Why After Celsius, I'm a Big Fan of TallyHoWallet and Similar - https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-musings-consumer-impacts/why-after-celsius-im-a-big-fan-of-tallyhowallet-and-similar-xkpyjrr
