Telegram's original "escrow guarantee" mechanism, designed to protect transaction funds, is being manipulated by scam gangs, evolving into a sophisticated trap for harvesting investment novices. Recently, multiple cases have been exposed, revealing two common high-frequency scams on the platform, involving huge amounts of money, with many users suffering severe losses.
The first scam is "robot hijacking." Scammers impersonate cryptocurrency bigwigs and guide victims to use their designated "escrow robot" to set up trading groups. Once users transfer the deposit to the wallet address provided by the robot, the funds are immediately transferred. An OTC cryptocurrency trader once lost 120,000 USDT due to this.
The second method is "clone group switcheroo." If users insist on using their own group for escrow, the scammer delays the process and quickly creates an almost identical clone group, even copying avatars and group member IDs. Subsequently, users are quietly transferred to the fake group and receive forged "rule updates," only to realize they have been removed from the original group after being tricked into paying a deposit.
Fraud experts point out that these scam operations often exploit three major vulnerabilities: the ease of copying Telegram group interfaces, the ease of overriding system messages, and users' lack of deep understanding of platform mechanisms. More deceitfully, the two scams are often used alternately, making them hard to guard against. One victim said, "I considered myself experienced, but I was breached by fake news in seconds, losing nearly 80,000 yuan."
Chain analysis shows that at least one scam gang has illegally profited over 23 million yuan in the past two years through similar means, with most of the involved funds flowing into Cambodia's underground financial network. Due to the lack of platform regulation and user fraud awareness, the "escrow guarantee" is gradually becoming a high-risk link in telecom fraud.
Investors must remain vigilant and avoid trusting escrow mechanisms on unfamiliar channels to prevent their funds from being exploited or stolen by criminals.
