SCAM: PowerBTC Offers Bitcoin Earnings Without The Earnings

They say they'll buy your bitcoin at 10%. It's an offer almost too good to turn down until you look a bit deeper into this probable scam.

The problem with PowerBTC is that they leave out the actual "buy" part of their "buy" offer. You just send them the bitcoin and that's the end of the transaction. 

If It Walks Like a Duck....

The story with PowerBTC is that at a glance they look great. They sound great. The website is good enough to be realistic without any fails of past attempts. They even have a cheesy video to add.

They offer 10% over exchange price for bitcoin with payout methods of Western Union, PayPal, or Bank Transfer. 

If this is sounding all too familiar it's because the scam has been attempted many times and its rather possible that the same group behind BTCFlap is behind PowerBTC. It's certainly the same (almost exactly the same) business model.

The BTCFlap crew also had a very similar "cheesy video" as well ad like that website, PowerBTC is going to leave you without any compensation for your bitcoin.

Let's Play Peel The Onion

Let's take a closer look at PowerBTC. 

Layer 1: First of the website didn't exist 90 days ago. It was registered on June 24th, 2016. The is a red flag in itself because it tells you immediately that this is a new entity. 

Layer 2: Secondly they did the "Power PR" move of paying for a press release. This got them coverage just about everywhere including mainstream media which is a pattern of these scams. (NextBank, BTCGaw, BTCFlap, etc... all did the same PR "promote-grab-and-run") 

Layer 3: You just have to take note of the "CEO's" name. Mark Twein.

Layer 4: There are reports of people already being ripped off in this sites short history (See YouTube below).

Layer 5: The address given is a Hotel with retail space available. Hardly an office location.

Layer 6: The CEO came from nowhere and isn't the individual who owns the website.  Which by itself is unimpressive but that individuals name is Mike Hamble. Here's why that's important. Take a look at the registration.

Registrant Name: Mike Hamble

Registrant Organization: Power BTC LLC.

Registrant Street: silmonte 13

Registrant City: New York

Registrant State/Province: New York

Registrant Postal Code: 100016

Registrant Country: US

Registrant Phone: +1.3326168357

Domain Name: POWERBTC.COM

Registry Domain ID: 2037268962_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.publicdomainregistry.com

Registrar URL: www.publicdomainregistry.com

Updated Date: 2016-08-24T03:13:21Z

Creation Date: 2016-06-24T11:20:48Z

Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2017-06-24T11:20:48Z

Registrar: PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com

Registrar IANA ID: 303

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

Registry Registrant ID:

Registrant Name: Mike Hamble

Registrant Organization: Power BTC LLC.

Registrant Street: silmonte 13

Registrant City: New York

Registrant State/Province: New York

Registrant Postal Code: 100016

Registrant Country: US

Registrant Phone: +1.3326168357

Registrant Phone Ext:

Registrant Fax:

Registrant Fax Ext:

Registrant Email: [email protected]

Registry Admin ID:

Look at the email address, [email protected] and then cross reference that with the "all-too-familiar" BTCGaw.

BTCGaw.com Registration Excerpt

Admin Phone: +47.725167822

Admin Phone Ext.:

Admin

Fax:

Admin Fax Ext.:

Admin Email:

[email protected]

Registry Tech ID:

Tech Name: Laila

Risan

Case in point.

To top it all off, just have a look at their their very own YouTube video. You'll see plenty of folks seem to be having a bit of trouble trying to collect their payment once the irreversible bitcoin transaction have concluded.

THIS IS A SCAM - IT IS THE SAME BTCFLAP AND BTCGAW SCAM

The ducks are back and with a new spawn of the same crap. It was a scam then, it's a scam now. We recommend staying away from PowerBTC because the only power you're going to see is the absolute lack of it you have as they waltz right out of town with your bitcoin. 

To make it worse, they might try and scam your bank account as well if you hand that over to them, so don't even give this a test.

With the recent media blitz you have to really watch it.The press releases get picked up on websites such as Nasdaq which appear to grant them credibility. This is not the case and the press release was merely passed on without anyone likely even reading it. They have zero credibility and only a proven record of past scamming.

That all said, just to give it a spin, we sent in some coin in our normal testing fashion. That was about a day ago and guess what? Still no PayPal payment.

Shocker there!

Avoid PowerBTC. It's a 100% scam. 

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Report by dinbits

Image source: dinbits staff

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