Fake recruiters copy real crypto companies, real job titles and real logos. They want your money, your wallet or your computer. Here is how the common scams work, and how to check any job yourself in a few minutes.
Each one ends with you paying, signing or running something. None of them is how a real company hires.
Someone introduces themselves as a recruiter or HR manager of a real crypto company, often with a copied profile photo and the company’s name in their bio. The talk moves quickly to Telegram, WhatsApp or Discord, away from any company email.
Check: Look the role up on the company’s own careers page. If it is not there, the “recruiter” is not hiring for it.
As a “verification step” or a paid test task, you are asked to connect your wallet to a site, sign a message, approve a token or “claim” a payment. Signing can give the other side permission to move what is in your wallet.
Check: No hiring process needs your wallet. Never connect it or sign anything to apply, test or get paid.
The job is yours, but first you pay: for training, a laptop or “equipment”, a starter kit, a visa, a background check, or to “activate” the account that pays your salary. The money is often requested in USDT or another coin, and promised back later.
Check: A real employer never charges you to start. Any fee, deposit or top-up before your first salary is the scam.
An unsolicited offer arrives in a DM: high pay for little work, no interview, no contract, and pressure to decide today. Often it is a “moderator”, “community” or “data entry” role, because these are the jobs beginners search for.
Check: Real offers follow an application and interviews. Treat an offer you never applied for as a scam until the company confirms it from its own domain.
The link looks right at a glance: an extra letter, a hyphen, “-careers” or “-hr” added, or a different ending such as .net instead of .com. The page is a copy of the real careers site, and emails come from that look-alike domain or a free mail address.
Check: Type the company’s address yourself, or start from its official website and click through to Careers.
Developers are sent a repository as a take-home task or are asked to run a project during a call. Installing or starting it runs hidden code that can steal browser data, saved passwords and wallet files. Security researchers have documented campaigns built on exactly this kind of fake interview.
Check: Never run code from a stranger on the computer that holds your wallets or logins. Read it first, and use a throwaway virtual machine if you must run it.
It takes a few minutes, and it works for every company, whether or not it is listed here.
Act quickly, and do not be embarrassed: these scams are made to fool careful people.
Every job with the Official website badge is read straight from the company’s own job board or careers page (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, SmartRecruiters, Recruitee) and links to the exact posting. When the company takes it down, it disappears here too.
Not always, but you cannot tell from the chat. Ask for the job link and find the same job yourself on the company’s own careers page. If it is not there, do not continue.
No. Applying, interviewing and test tasks never need your wallet, a signature or a token approval. A request to connect or sign is the attack itself.
No. A real employer pays for your training and your equipment. Any request to pay, deposit or “top up” before you are paid is a scam.
Treat it as untrusted software. Installing or starting a project can run code on your computer. Read it first, and if you must run it, use a separate virtual machine with no wallets, passwords or logins on it.
Go to the company’s official website on your own, open its careers page and look for the same role. Apply only there, and check that every address you use is on the company’s own domain.
Jobs with the Official website badge are read directly from the company’s own job board or careers page, and they disappear here when the company takes them down. Anything from another source is checked for scam patterns and reviewed by an editor first.