'Crypto Exchange' Goxtrade Caught Using Stolen Photos on Its Staff Page

[Pegasus]

Goxtrade, an organization claiming to be a cryptocurrency exchange that bills itself as a “trusted platform for trading bitcoins,” has been caught using other people’s photos on its staff page, and using false information regarding its location.

According to TechCrunch, Goxtrade claims to have launched back in 2017, but whois records show its website was launched earlier this month. Moreover, it has been using photos stolen from social media profiles and from other company websites that aren’t associated with it.

In some cases, Goxtrade didn’t even change the name of the person whose photos it stole. Amber Baldet, the co-founder of Clovyr and a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency space, found out her photo was being used, and warned its followers she wasn’t associated with the company.

Fraud alert: I am not a developer at goxtrade dot com and probably their entire business is a lie.

Nice to see women as head of Dev & Security, though, those diversity events are paying off in a great fake recruiting pipeline. I would have gone for POC in reg affairs but hey pic.twitter.com/BMMZSUppGT

— Amber ☘️ (@AmberBaldet) May 17, 2019
Goxtrade’s website, moreover, doesn’t appear to work properly, although it claims to be a crypto exchange running since 2017. Its name is related to the now-defunct Mt Gox exchange, which back in 2014 handled most of bitcoin’s trading volume, before being hacked.

Per TechCrunch, the other photos on Goxtrade’s staff page are from people found on social media, including a lawyer in Germany, an operations manager in Melbourne, and more. Tom Blomfield, the CEO of digital bank Monzo, replied to Baldet’s warning revealing his legal team filed complaints with the site’s hosts.

The news outlet’s investigation into Goxtrade further found that while it lists its registered address as the Heron Tower in London, no company listed in the building has its name, nor any company in the U.K.’s registry of companies and businesses.

In fact, the alleged crypto exchange’s registered number in its terms and conditions page points to an unrelated clothing company that dissolved two years ago. Recently, networking giant Cloudflare flagged its website as a phishing website.

Fraud in the cryptocurrency space is nothing new. A report published by U.S.-based data security firm CipherTrace revealed that in the first quarter of this year, $1.2 billion worth of crypto were lost to fraud and theft, an amount equivalent to 70% of all crypto funds lost the same way in 2017.

Belgium’s financial regulator, the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) even runs a list of websites users complained about after trying to invest in cryptocurrencies through them.

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