NOVA CHEM SCAM, FREELANCE GRAPHIC DESIGNER IDENTITY THEFT AND FRAUD, Bitcoin, Vlad Grigore, Micheal Smith, btc24.io, LinkedIn

Hello guys... my aim is to ruin these hackers lives, just like they do to the unfortunate people who fall for their scams. If you've been approached by Micheal Smith / Vlad Grigore / Joe Stephen then DON'T fall for their scam. I caught myself at the last minute, but trust me this is the most elaborate, well thought out scam I have ever come across - SERIOUSLY, like WOW. Anyway.. please read the details below, all information is out there, including all of their details at the bottom.  

So, I was very nearly scammed because about a month ago a man called Micheal Smith who said he was HR of Nova Chem company from Romania contacted me about a freelance Logo Design project through LinkedIn. We went through a whole interview-style process of why I would be good for the role, I answered loads of questions and he told me about his company and so on.. Anyway, after I passed the process he directed me over to the app Telegram to speak to the manager Vlad Grigore. I have been speaking to him for months about the project and what they do as a company – it all seemed legit. I then went on to draft a contract, he said he would pay me 10,000 euros for the whole project which included Logo Design, Brand Identity etc. We agreed to pay through bitcoin, I wasn’t happy with this at first but after much research, I found out that it was very common for freelancers to get paid by international corporations this way. Anyway, I signed up to Coinbase a site I trusted since a close friend of mine uses it regularly. However, after a few attempts, Vlad claimed he was unable to send money to this platform. So, after this I suggested was there anything I could do on my end to help, and he suggested I use this platform btc24.io. I hadn’t heard of this before, but it seemed legit (not now, but we all live and learn.. don't go near any other that .com or .co.uk), so anyway, I signed up, sent my scanned passport. Once this was all verified, I sent over £6.45 from my other bitcoin account Coinbase in order to test the site out, however, later read that you can only withdraw a minimum of 500 USD so I thought I would have to wait until Vlad paid the deposit for my work before I got the money back. Once this was all confirmed and ready to go, Vlad signed the contract for the design project, and we were able to progress with the project. He paid me 50% of the entire project (500 euros as a deposit and 4,500 euros as the first payment). I said to him that I need to confirm everything and make sure I can extract the money from the account before I went forward with the project work. So, when I tried doing so on btc24.io I was asked to provide further information which included an Image of myself next to my passport photo, proof of origins of funds which in this case was the Freelance Design Contract and Invoice and a utility bill for proof of address which was my O2 Phone Bill. Once this was all sent across, confirmed and verified I tried withdrawing the funds again, but it still didn’t work and the account notified me that the account was only 95% verified. I contacted support and they said this:  

“Thanks for your waiting. We apologize for the delay in replying. Your account has been successfully verified, however, according to clause 12.1 of our Terms & Conditions, the System uses a scoring model for assessing the security quality of the User's account based on more than 170 internal and external publicly available behaviour parameters, technical data and other internal corporate metrics. The maximum possible score for the security of the User's account is 100 points. Your account's security quality score is 95/100, which means that you have almost the maximum level. However, according to clause 12.3. of our User Agreement: "Wallets whose balances have reached at least once the amount 0.125 BTC (or the same value in other currencies) can Transfer Funds from BTC24 Account into an External Account and Internal Addresses only with an account security level of 100 (security level is an internal scoring model for assessing the security quality of BTC24 system accounts)". Thus, you need to get 100 of the account's security quality score. To get it, You should link your External Account to BTC24 Account. To link Your External Account to BTC24 Account, You need to make a Deposit of the exact amount of 0.025 BTC from your External Account. This Deposit will be credited to Your Bitcoin wallet and will be available for withdrawal immediately after crediting. After linking Your Bitcoin wallet, Your account will have 100 points of account's security quality score and, accordingly, the withdrawal of all types of cryptocurrencies will resume instantly.”

This is when I started to think it was a scam. So, I started googling and came across this thread on Reddit where I met a girl or guy who had come across the same scam and unfortunately paid the 0.025btc. I spoke to her about it, and she’d actually lost a lot of money from the scam, I lost only £6 which I’m so relieved about because I’m not what I would call the definition of financially secure (especially due to working in the creative industries). Anyway, this is when I flagged everything up. I did get back in touch with all the scammers to get a response and I just received nothing in return. From what I can tell both the company NOVA Chem and the crypto account btc24.io is all a scam, I actually think Vlad and Micheal (whoever they may be... probably some fat old bald men) own btc24.io and we designers are playing right into their hands and they are scamming us out of hard-earned money and stealing our identity for personal future financial gain.  

People Involved: Vlad Grigore, Micheal Smith, Joe Stephen

Platforms Involved: LinkedIn , Telegram, Btc24.io, Payeer (not sure if this place is a scam, but they were involved in the whole case)  

Company Details: NOVA CHEM SRL, BTC24.io

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So creatives, be safe out there! Don't fall for these scams, honestly, I look back now and can see all the red flags, I feel rather silly for missing them, but I like to believe the best in people so I just didn't see it until the last hurdle. But thank god I did! Lesson learnt, farewell £6 and Vlad & Micheal I am coming for you ...