How to Avoid Common P2P Fraud Schemes?

Phemex offers P2P (peer-to-peer) services, where users can buy crypto with local fiat or sell crypto for local fiat. Please note that different countries may have different purchasing options subject to each fiat partner. To learn more about P2P services, check out What Is Peer 2 Peer Trading?

Before trading on the P2P Marketplace, make sure that you are aware of these common P2P fraud schemes to avoid being suspended or losing your funds.

Placing Consecutive Orders of Identical Amounts in An Attempt to Confuse The System

A scammer could use different accounts or even just one same account to place consecutive orders of identical amounts over a short period of time. If you fail to carefully check the accounts and order tickets, you might be fooled into releasing the coins.

For example: The scammer placed six orders, each worth 1000 BNB, even though their funds can only cover five orders. They sent the fifth and sixth orders at almost the exact same time, and claimed that they paid for all six orders. If you do not check each order carefully, you could end up fulfilling the fraudulent sixth order by mistake.

Reminder: In this case, you must carefully check the order details and transaction history, no matter how much the other party pressures you. You must also check whether the name on the payment account matches the platform’s real-name verification for the user. The currency cannot be released if the names do not match.

Transfer Errors

A scammer may deliberately make an incorrect transfer (e.g., send funds to themselves and pretend they sent it to you), then provide a screenshot of payment to a merchant or customer support, and request the currency.

Reminder: The current status of your receiving account shall be proof. If the funds do not arrive in the account, then you must not release anything.

Fake Receipt Fraud

In this type of fraud, the scammer sends a fake receipt after placing an order and clicking Confirm Payment. You can easily fall victim to this scam if you verify the receipt and release the funds without confirming that the funds have landed in the receiving account. At this time, you will have to log in to the bank or other payment account to confirm the funds.

Also, be aware of these advanced fraud schemes :

1. Two users place two orders of the same amount at the same time. Scammer A made the payment but did not mark the order as paid at the same time. Scammer B clicked “mark as paid” without paying any money and provided a screenshot (which was actually from Scammer A, because he is the one who made the actual payment), in an attempt to get you to release the funds. The goal is to make you feel anxious enough to release the funds right away without verifying the transfer. It can be easy to release funds without verifying the user who initiated the transfer. Later, Scammer A will provide the same payment proof and request that the tokens be released. If you are not careful, you’ll end up releasing tokens 2 times, but only receiving ½ of the assets being bought.
2. An order is placed in the amount of 10,000 RMB and payment is made in the amount of 1,000 RMB, or an order is placed in the amount of 1,000 USDT, and payment is made in the amount of 1,000 RMB, and other similar operations. Information about this type of operation can be related to customer support so they can verify the reason this type of operation was performed. (This type of operation may be performed by accident by a novice user and is not necessarily fraud).
3. Scammer A contacted Binance P2P users B and C respectively through social media channels. A pretended he was B when contacting C, claiming that he wanted to sell coins to C. At the same time, A reached out to B while pretending to be C and said that he wanted to buy from B. Then, A required B to post a sell ad, and asked B to take a screenshot of that ad. Then, A sent this screenshot to C, and gave another account for payment collection, giving excuses like “The payment method shown in on the ad exceeds a certain limit and cannot receive money for that day,” to convince C to send to the fraudulent account. In the end, A collected the money which should have been paid to B, C lost assets, and B’s order could not be taken.

Note: Do not mention anyone’s name in the chat. Payment must be submitted using the person’s linked payment method, and the name on the account must match the person’s real name on the platform.

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