I understand that it's been twenty-three days since the announcement of my "Threat Hunter" series. Honestly, I've been kind of lazy playing a popular MMORPG on Battle net. This is due to being tried from my full time job. However, I will bring the content no matter how long it takes.
On June 9th, 2024, I encountered someone posting on Las Vegas Facebook group promising outstanding returns if people decide to join his team. At the time this individual portrayed himself as "John G. Smith." Come to find out of course, this super original person with 'creative' ideas was running a fake profile. The profile stole a photo of someone else. Additionally, this fake profile received substantial support from other fake profiles potentially created by our threat actor.
Unfortunately, some actual investors expressed interest in the impressive results being advertised. One of the fake profiles had a particularly suspicious success story that caught my attention, so I decided to contact both the John G. Smith profile and the other one as well. My notes at the bottom of this blog will display everything I've come across regarding the fake profiles and the actual owners of the pictures. I will also include a couple of the free, AI-powered image reverse lookup tools used in this small investigation. I will not be providing the names of the actual people in the photos as they did not respond to my inquiry about using their likeness for malicious gains.
This is how the conversations went:
Once I asked "John" if he knew the person he was impersonating the profile proceeded to block me and change their last name.
The following is my conversation with the so-called fan of this service. They went by the name of "Christopher Rogers." Needless to say the result was similar. Here is the Facebook conversation:
It appears that both the main profile and customer front are controlled by the same people or person. Both profiles proceeded to block me after asking the million dollar question. There are case notes that will be included at the end of this blog.
To search the images, I used these two websites, https://copyseeker.net/ & https://www.vecteezy.com/reverse-image-search. If you are suspicious of anyone you are talking to online, these two great tools can assist. Google reverse image search was also used, however, it's not as accurate.
The website offered was Financemarket24. From what "John" told me, people sign up for a profile then he links his account and takes over trading for yours. An online user with a little bit of experience can quickly tell that this is a scam website. Continuous numbers appear on the front page displaying depositing or withdrawals from "users" on a loop. More inexperienced people could have a little trouble identifying the scam. Fiancemarket24 claims to offer cryptocurrency and forex offers. The address on the bottom of the website is in a residential neighborhood. Do not fall for these types of scams. Always interview people giving offers thoroughly. Use Open-Source Intelligence Networks (OSINT) to verify the legitimacy of online users and their claims.
After gathering information I was able to submit a report with Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Unfortunately, their internet complaint form's attachment portal was not working correctly so I left them my email to reach out and receive the evidence I'm sharing today.
These are my case notes:
I hope you enjoyed this segment of "Threat Hunter." Make sure to upvote and follow for more content coming soon. I will also be working on creating virtual reality videos for some of my blog post. There are some sick and evil people taking advantage of our youth today and one of the main sources used are platforms young people enjoy.
This post was written by me and partially edited by Google Gemini A.I.
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