Phishing and scams claiming the identity of Digital Asset Holdings, LLC
Digital Asset is aware that various individuals or groups are attempting to use our company brand, logos, and our visibility in the marketplace to run fake investment or employment scams. In many cases these scams are executed from web domains that are similar to our corporate domain names. They are often from support or individual-name @<some-similar-sounding-company-name>. Individuals have also attempted to impersonate members of Digital Asset staff, or validate connection or employment solely through social media profiles, particularly LinkedIn.
Sadly there are many groups who attempt to fraudulently obtain money or personal information from individuals. If someone contacts you via email, text messages or via other person-to-person messaging apps, please treat with suspicion until you can independently verify their identity. Digital Asset does not solicit individuals for investments. Therefore, we strongly recommend you do not make any monetary investment or other commitment with a person who purports to act on Digital Asset’s behalf. In addition, be aware that criminals may send you articles about the Company, or videos of senior staff of the firm, to mislead you to believe they work for the Company. These materials are freely available on the internet and do not prove the sender is authentic.
To validate the contact you have received, please consider the following:
- All communications from Digital Asset will only come from digitalasset.com or daml.com or another domain identified on this page. Any other domain used to communicate with the public is likely fraudulent.
- Our primary domains are only:
- Digital Asset Holdings is a software technology company and does not provide any investment advice or opportunities, including but not limited to the following:
- Investment opportunities in the firm for private individuals;
- Investment schemes or profit-return schemes involving Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, or any digitized assets.
- The firm may use recruitment agencies to hire candidates, but all open positions can be validated on the Careers section of this website. If you believe you are the target of a scam, please validate that a solicitation for a position with our firm is genuine by checking our website and emailing hr@digitalasset.com before handing over personal or sensitive information. We will never ask a candidate to send us funds, or request an expenditure (for example, to purchase a laptop that will be “reimbursed” upon commencement of employment) as a condition to being considered for employment or as part of the candidate review process.
In the event that you feel that you were targeted by or invested in a fake scheme, or you were offered a fake position with the company, your first priority should be to report the individuals to your Local Law Enforcement. They are best placed to investigate such crimes. This includes local Police, Financial or Cyber Crimes units.
If you have any questions or concerns, or have been approached for investment or employment opportunities that you believe are not legitimate, please contact us at security@digitalasset.com.
How to provide Information to us
To help us, please provide any of the following:
- The names of any email or Internet domains used to contact you
- Links to any websites that use the Digital Asset branding or logos, or include text or videos of Digital Asset staff
- Examples of emails or screenshots of messages
- Copies of the email headers. This is often found via menu options like “show original”, “headers”, “message source” or “raw message”. Copy and paste the message headers into a new email to send to us and do not simply forward the email to us.
- Copies of correspondence, ideally redacted of any of your personal or sensitive information
If for any reason you need to send us your personal information, please contact us first so we can advise you how to send the information securely.
Common types of scams and phishing activities
Internet scams and phishing attacks are not specific to Digital Asset. These schemes are used frequently and across industries with the intent to defraud people and companies of money, banking details, and personal or sensitive information. The information is often then resold.
Examples of scams include (see https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams):
- Attempts to get your personal information to then use for other fraudulent activities (applying for credit cards, credit, loans, etc)
- Buying or selling fake products or services
- Dating or romance - pretending to have a romantic interest to access money or personal details
- Disasters or pandemics - for example currently Covid-19 is a source for many scams
- Fake charities
- Fake Investment “Get Rich” Schemes
- Jobs or employment offers to non-existent roles
- Unexpected money or winnings
- Urgent or priority requests
- A payment on your behalf to enable a bank transfer of some larger amount to you.
- A request from your CEO to move a large amount of money to a “vendor” or “service provider” - often internal e-mail addresses are spoofed.
How to protect yourself:
- Always be suspicious of someone who contacts you unexpectedly.
- Be cautious of a switch from casual conversation to an investment strategy. Ask yourself:
- Why would someone on a dating site suddenly switch to asking me for money?
- Does their proposal sound too good to be true? (It typically is!)
- Ask a friend or business associate for their perspective on the offer. Ask for their complete objectivity and listen to their response objectively. (Don’t just hear what you want to hear).
- Don’t be afraid to offend the individual or make them uncomfortable. People who are trying to scam typically apply pressure through available time, urgency or opportunity. You can use the reverse tactic. Move slowly and have every nuance explained to you. Typically you will hear something that sounds wrong when it is a scam.
- Listen. Something about what they say or how they respond may seem incongruous. Make them talk, listen carefully to what they say and note any evasiveness. Study their answers. Catfishers like you to do all the talking.
- Search for the individual. Check for them on social media. Beware of newly created profiles or little information. Note the numbers of connections, friends or followers, look for comments or endorsements, check the span of time over which they were made. Employment history can be fabricated and is not checked, for example by LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn: Copy sentences from their self-summaries, bios, or other profile specifics. Paste them into a search to see if they are the true source.
- Yandex or Google reverse image searches are often a help when it comes to quick and easy background checks where you can get an image of the individual.
- Right-click their photos, copy the URL, and paste in the box at https://yandex.com/images/ or images.google.com (In Google Chrome you can just right-click the image and do the search from there).
- If their photos match people with a different name, that’s a red flag.
- Often the individual will claim to know an associate in common, if so, reach out to that person and verify the individual and the relationship.
- If the individual says that they lived somewhere you know really well, ask them about landmarks, restaurants or shops. If they are new to you, note them and verify them after the conversation.
- Meet the individual in a Zoom session. Ask to see their identification (Work ID or business card). Tell them you are recording the session so you can review it later. Then record the session. Easy enough to do, but hated by con artists.
- Hear the alarm bells if they say they need your “help” financially. Unless you have gone out looking for charities to donate to this should immediately raise red flags.