OneCoin Ponzi Scheme Used Fake Reviews On TrustPilot And Quora

New research in the Bitcoin scams news conducted by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) shows that the notorious OneCoin Ponzi scheme used fake reviews on sites like TrustPilot and Quora in order to lure investors in.

The report, published on January 29, shows that OneCoin received a lot of five-star reviews on TrustPilot after the media started negatively covering it starting from October 2019. We can also see that of the 579 TrustPilot reviews of OneCoin, even 90% were positive and about 400 of the five-star ratings were published in a single month. DFRLab also stated that the OneCoin Ponzi scheme received some one-star ratings but these were far outnumbered by the positive reviews.

Researchers were unable to guarantee whether this issue is real – and whether the accounts posting the reviews were inauthentic or automated mostly because of TrustPilot’s design. However, they said that their activity was suspicious and further noted the following:

“October 2019 spike in five-star ratings, however, indicated an abnormal influx of favorable reviews just as OneCoin’s public relations and legal woes mounted. The possibility remains that the influx for both ratings and reviews was organic, though the timing and extreme bias was highly suspicious.”

DFRLab also saw that there were many profiles praising the OneCoin Ponzi scheme on the question-and-answer platform Quora which as per the report, showed “inauthentic behaviour, such as no profile pictures, no biographical information, inconsistent posting times, and an exclusive interest in OneCoin-related discussions.”

The researchers showed one profile in which the owner described herself as a “crypto expert and investor” but was active and only answered questions about OneCoin. This account was active from January to March 2018 and the peak activity was when OneCoin was most active among users.

“As OneCoin’s legal challenges mounted, the company’s pyramid marketing scheme garnered significant attention. Its digital marketing tactics, however, received considerably less scrutiny,” the report also reads.

For those of you who did not follow our cryptonews, OneCoin is one of the most well-known crypto scams. The official website only ceased operations in December last year, when the New York Southern Court granted a continuation in the lawsuit against the CFO of a private equity fund which was allegedly linked to the scam.