Following the discovery of the campaign, BitMEX conducted a deeper investigation into the website and quickly confirmed that the platform bears no credible connection whatsoever to the real Salomon Brothers or its historical leadership structure. While the fraudulent website attempts to bolster its credibility by displaying a list of real individuals who genuinely worked at the esteemed financial institution during the 1980s, none of those former employees have any known association with this newly emerged and spurious entity.<\/p>\n The research platform noted that the overarching strategy behind the campaign bears striking similarities to earlier, controversial controversies. Specifically, analysts pointed out parallels to past efforts associated with public figures such as Calvin Ayre, who previously financed various legal actions and investigations surrounding the very same historical Bitcoin address. <\/p>\n In a public statement detailing their findings, BitMEX Research cautioned the crypto community: "The links between this company and this website are fake. There is a page with an ‘advisory board’ that contains real people who worked at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, however, these people seem to have no link to this new spurious entity."<\/p>\n As news of the scam spread across the digital asset ecosystem, blockchain community members quickly weighed in with their own technical assessments and warnings. Many observers pointed out that legitimate wallet owners wishing to prove historical activity or coin ownership would typically execute a minor transaction\u2014moving a nominal, negligible amount of Bitcoin to a new address\u2014rather than transferring or exposing an entire balance or private key details to an unverified web platform.<\/p>\n This glaring technical inefficiency has led numerous security analysts and community sleuths to suspect that the campaign is not genuinely designed to identify rightful heirs or original owners, but is instead part of a broader, highly targeted social engineering scam. The ultimate objective appears to be harvesting sensitive personal information, private keys, or credentials under the guise of an official legal proceeding.<\/p>\n Escalating Threats in the Digital Asset Space<\/strong><\/p>\n Emphasizing the severe risks involved, BitMEX reiterated that users and holders of vintage cryptocurrency assets should completely avoid interacting with the suspicious contact form or providing any personal documents, signatures, or cryptographic data. <\/p>\n The sudden emergence of these sophisticated, legal-themed social engineering schemes highlights the continuously evolving and increasingly complex nature of cryptocurrency-related fraud. As blockchain forensics improve and direct protocol exploits face stiffer technical defenses, malicious actors are increasingly turning to psychological manipulation, phishing, and elaborate impersonation tactics to separate victims from their digital wealth.<\/p>\n This trend coincides with an alarming surge in broader crypto crimes. Data tracking the industry landscape indicates that in the first half of 2025 alone, hackers and cybercriminal syndicates successfully stole over $2.1 billion across 75 separate security incidents. This staggering figure represents a notable 10% increase in total stolen funds compared to the exact same period in the previous year, driven in part by a ramp-up in operations by state-backed hacking groups and organized syndicates targeting both institutional and individual holders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cryptocurrency analysts at BitMEX Research have issued an urgent security warning regarding a sophisticated and deceptive new scam campaign specifically targeting early Bitcoin holders, with a primary focus on long-dormant wallets dating back to 2011. According to the intelligence gathered by the firm, the malicious campaign exploits dormant blockchain addresses by injecting fraudulent transactions and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":1691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[578],"tags":[25,676,377,296,529,283,999,930,184,580,532,579,1622,630,685,115],"class_list":["post-1692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fraud-scams","tag-bitcoin","tag-early","tag-fake","tag-fraud","tag-holders","tag-legal","tag-lost","tag-notices","tag-phishing","tag-prevention","tag-scam","tag-scams","tag-surfaces","tag-target","tag-using","tag-wallet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyominginvest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Scam](\"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/scammer-bitcoin-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n