Fake Uniswap, Wintermute Reps Con Californian Crypto Curious

Californian regulators have issued consumer warnings against 16 crypto broker scams, with one victim losing $14,000 to a fake Uniswap venture

by Shalini Nagarajan /

December 29, 2022 09:03 am

solarseven/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has issued fraud alerts about phony entities posing as decentralized exchange Uniswap and crypto market maker Wintermute.

The alerts came alongside posts for 14 other registered entities apparently peddling crypto-themed Advance Fee scams.

In one instance, the victim claimed a “UniSwap LLC” lured them into investing $14,000 in what was presented as a Uniswap liquidity mining venture.

Per DFPI: “The victim met a person calling themselves ‘Heitor Ryan’ on the internet who claimed to work at a bank. They chatted as friends for several months, then Heitor lured the victim into investing on a crypto website that turned out to be a fraud.”

Another victim in a separate scam was convinced to send more than $167,000 to who they believe was crypto trading outfit Wintermute.

“The victim met someone calling herself ‘Rosalie’ on WhatsApp, who introduced him to eth-Wintermute dot net, telling the victim this would generate dividends on liquidity pools every six hours based on the amount of money put into the MetaMask app wallet,” DFPI wrote (Blockworks advises caution when interacting with the quoted domain).

Phishers and other bad actors commonly spoof popular crypto platforms to target digital asset investors. Users are advised to always triple check the domains they interact with.

But 2022 will perhaps go down as the biggest year of crypto-related frauds in history so far, thanks in no small part to the Sam Bankman-Fried case.

Between January to November, investors lost more than $4 billion worth of crypto — a 37% jump from last year, according to a study by Privacy Affairs.

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