Deribit has issued a warning about rising cases of job scams targeting crypto talents.
Fraudsters are leveraging social engineering tricks and fake LinkedIn profiles to steal from victims.
Users should be careful when job hunting, particularly developers and senior company staff.
Cryptocurrency options and futures exchange Deribit has alerted its users and the broader community to a surge in scams targeting job seekers across the crypto space.
Anthony Sweeny, chief information security officer at Deribit, shared the warning via a post on X, noting that the fraudulent recruiters have increased their attacks in recent months.
Mostly, these scammers impersonate Deribit recruiters – a scenario that is also playing out in other sectors.
“In recent weeks, we’ve noticed a surge in scammers posing as recruiters claiming to work for Deribit (and likely other well-known firms soon). The crypto industry often pioneers the latest fraud tactics, and this scam is no exception—we expect it to spread to other sectors fast,” Sweeney wrote.
Scams employing social engineering tricks
According to Deribit, the scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and are exploiting the crypto industry’s pace and opportunities to swindle unsuspecting users. It’s one of the common crypto scams today.
“This clever social engineering trick hooks you in two ways,”the Deribit CISO added, noting that the fraudsters “dangle an irresistible job offer with a sky-high salary” to snag job seekers.
Also in their playbook is the fact that most people do not share that they are job hunting. Keeping this quiet allows the scammers to complete their job on victims.
To get crypto job seekers hooked, the scammers first set up fake profiles on LinkedIn.
Here they pretend to be talent scouts, posting ads with lucrative roles that offer mouth-watering perks. Often, the target is senior staff at crypto companies or platforms and developers who may have access to sensitive information or systems. When a suitable target falls for the bait, they pounce.
In some cases, the scammers offer an “online assessment”, but whose main goal is to install malware on the jobseeker’s device.
Bring your work laptop is a red flag
The other option is to pretend to offer a job, sweetening the deal with “pre-hire perks” such as shares in a company. Before victims know it, the fraudsters have made off with their money.
They do not stop there. Instances of fake Deribit recruiters have seen individuals asked to attend in-person meetings for contract signing. But unsuspecting job seekers fall for the “bring your work laptop” scam, in which case the aim is to access company devices.
Deribit’s warning adds to the many alerts crypto companies and security platforms have issued over the past several months.
Phishing scams have targeted crypto networks such as Monero, while fraudsters have hacked into prominent accounts on X to promote fake projects or steal users’ cryptocurrencies.
