Defieo Review – Is Defieo.co a SCAM?

Welcome to our Defieo Review in which we shall try to detemine whether defieo.co is legit or if it might be a SCAM!

Two days ago, on October 28, one of our partners received the following complaint:

I invested money in defieo.co. I did not realize that the person I worked with was a scammer

That person, unfortunately, reported losing 393,000 USD to these scammers.

We have therefore decided to write a comprehensive defieo.co review in order to help prevent other people from falling for any scams associated with this website.

What is Defieo.co? Defieo Review

On our first visit to defieo.co, the site appears to be legitimate and professional designed.

Defieo.co offers users to participate in DEFI Financial Management Lock-Up Activities, with an annual profit rate of up to 125%.

We quickly notice that they are offering an exceptionally high yield, and that their offer is too good to be true.

Remembering the age-old rule that if something appears to be too good to be true, then it probably is, we begin to become a little more suspicious.

Moving forward with examining the website we see that they claim to have 5 years of experience in providing safe and reliable digital asset financial services, specializing in “distributed architecture and anti-DDoS attack systems”

They claim to own localized transaction service centers in many countries for the purpose of creating “a blockchain ecosystem integrating multiple business forms.”

Another pillar of their offer is that “the user is supreme,” and they offer “an advance compensation mechanism and set up investor protection fund.”

According to Defieo.co, they offer apps for iPhone, Android, and Windows.

However, the link to the iPhone app is broken, and the Android link leads not to the Google Play Store, but to a download of an APK file, which is a package file used to distribute apps on Google’s Android operating system.

The Windows app icon is not linked to anything.

Downloading an APK file not from the Google Play Store can pose a serious security threat.

Scammers can use APK files as a digital Trojan horse to install and run malware on your system.

You should never download and install APK files from sites you do not trust.

One of defieo’s services is offering pledge loan with “zero risk” and “stable returns.” You can use USDT, ETH, or BTC as a pledge/loanable coin and select an amount of coins you want to borrow.

Overall, after reading the entire homepage, we cannot say we possess a clear understanding of what Defieo.co is offering.

Our Defieo.co Video Review

About Defieo.co

Moving on to the About page at defieo.co, we need to find out who is behind the company.

On their About page, Defieo claims to have been operating for 7 years since 2014 (which suggests that even if this true, they did not update their website since 2021.)

In broken English they describe the history of their company:

DEFI has devoted itself to blockchain services and dedicated technology and channel construction services. From 2013 to 2016, it experienced an upward period of ‘steady and increasing’,2016-2017 first half of the ‘buy money to get rich’ crazy period,From the second half of 2018 to the cold winter period today, I have developed a real skill.Countless successful partners, so that low-key we have a high-profile reputation in the industry.

They then go on descriving who they are looking for. Strangely, they write in the first person:

From its inception to today I have been looking for the service providers who have difficulties and have the same taste with me. I have successfully solved the problems for dozens of service providers over several years, In today’s rational world, if you’re looking for a good partner, someone who can move forward with you — perhaps, talk to us. Be assured that the person you’re looking for has been looking for you.

In our opinion their About text doesn’t make much sense:

When a friend introduces you to a business, you are a good person. When I introduce you to business, I think you have a good reputation. When a client introduces you to a business, it proves that you are trustworthy.

Again, their business model is not clear. They go on writing that “The meaning of our existence is to adapt to the concept, system and requirements of different service providers, to solve a variety of problems. […] will be there where we are needed.”

So this About page is also unhelpful. We do not learn who is behind the company.

Interestingly, we were able to find that the exact same text and design on another domain: bitsmartex.com. It seems to be a clone of defieo.co.

We could also find this text on a YouTube channel of a website that is no longer active, loopcoin.ai.

Judging by the two videos on that channel, it seems that loopcoin.ao was Defieo’s previous reincarnation.

Defieo Contact Information

Up untl now we could not find any registered address, names, LinkedIn profiles, or even any contact information, except for an email address: deficsr@outlook.com. This is a free Outlook email address, which does not even use the company domain. Another red flag.

They offer a live chat widget through Zendesk. We sent a message to see if they have an address or a telephone number, their answer was “Please describe your problem in detail.” We then wrote:

I am writing a review regarding your platform and I want to know if you have any contact information except for an email address.

They answered: “If you need any help, just contact us.”

We asked if there’s a number we can call.

They said: “The exchange does not have telephone customer service.”

We asked where they are located.

They answered: “Customer Service cannot provide you with this information.”

Finally, we asked “We received a complaint from someone who said they invested a lot of money with you and claiming it was a scam. Do you have any comment?”

Their answer: “This is your personal question, which customer service cannot answer.”

Bitsmartex.com uses the following email address: support@bitsmartex.com, and they also use Telegram: @bitsmartex.

Defieo Review – Legal Documents

We next observe the legal documents on the website to try to find additional clues as to the owners of the website.

The Legal Notices, Privacy Policy, and User Agreement documents were last revised on November 2019 and refers to DeFieo.co as the owner.

Interestingly, the User Agreement says that “USE OF THE SERVICE BY PERSONS LOCATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF CUBA, IRAN, NORTH KOREA, SUDAN, SYRIA, VENEZUELA AND CRIMEA IS PROHIBITED” and “ANYONE IN ISRAEL, IRAQ, BANGLADESH, BOLIVIA, ECUADOR, KYRGYZSTAN, SEVASTOPOL IS PROHIBITED FROM USING THE DERIVATIVES TRADING SERVICES PROVIDED BY THIS WEBSITE.”

Much of their legal text seems to have been taken from other sites, especially huobi.com, however this list of countries we could only find on one more website which is no longer active: cointiger.shop.

Defieo.co Domain Information

Next, we review the domains associated with Defieo.

The domain defieo.co was registered on April 1 through the NameCheap, Inc. registrar for one year. The identity of the owners is hidden using a privacy service.

Cointiger.shop was registered on August 21, 2022 for one year through GANDI SAS, French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services, and the registrant country is China.

Bitsmartex.com was registered on September 8, 2022 for 2 years via to GoDaddy.com registrar. The owners’ identity is hidden by a privacy service.

loopcoin.ai was registered on November 8, 2021 via the NameCheap registrar. The owners’ information is hidden by a privacy service. Like Defieo.co, it also used an Outlook email (loopcoin.otc@outlook.com).

The domain in review, defieo.co, therefore is older than 6 months old, which means it has been online for long enough for us to ascertain whether it is legit or a scam.

According to SimilarWeb, its global rank is 17,264,374 globally and 4,994,467 in the United States, which means it is currently not very popular.

Cointiger.shop has a global rank of 13,722,898 and 3,799,280 in the United States so it was a little more popular than defieo.co.

The fact these domains are not popular is another red flag.

On Semrush we find that both domains have a 0 authority score and it has no backlinks from any trustworthy sites, another red flag.

Bitsmartex.com also has a 0 authority score, but it is mentioned in a few press releases on websites, such as timesnewswire.com, euleader.org, and wdpp.org.

The contact information listed on the press releases is:

• Company Name: BitSmart Technology LTD
• Contact Person: Martin Jacques
• Country: United Kingdom

Defieo Reviews

Next, we look at other Defieo.co Reviews.

One person posted the following complaint on July 2022 at JustAnswer.com:

I invested a little under $90,000 in cryptocurrency and did well according to the Site display of my account which shows a value of just over $500,000. When I attempted to withdraw this amount, they informed me that I would have to first pay to them the tax due for this gain in the amount of over 112,000. They gave me 7 working days to accomplish this. I raised the required amount and submitted it to them, but I was a couple of days late. Even though I requested an extension which was granted, they stated that because I was late, that my credit score had dropped from 100 to 76 and because of this I would be required to submit another $48,000 to bring my credit score back up to 100 […] after sending over $202,000 to them, I can not raise any more to send them

The lawyer’s answer was:

[…] defieo.co is just one more fly-by-night crypto broker, looking to run off with your money. Because they are unregulated, sites like this make their own rules and do as they please. There is nobody to stop them as they are trading illegally in the first place and are outside of the reach of the law. You would never have to put more money in to withdraw funds that are already supposedly yours. Any transfer expenses can be taken out of your balance. Any upfront requirements ALWAYS means scam […] They are not going to let you withdraw your money.

On Twitter we found the following warning:

[…] They have spammers in whatapp to lure you to their site and have you transfer your crypto on their platform. The bad part is that they will not let you trasfer your money back out.

Finally, Reddit contains several warnings against defieo.co.

One person writes:

I invested about 56k in Defieo.co and amassed about 300k. I tried to withdraw money from them and was told to invest 33.4 k so I could pay the IRS node. Because that was late I had to invest 30k to get my reputation up to 100. Each time I was told [and copied their conversation] I could withdraw money after I had made the deposits into the account I had with them. Then they wanted 29.4 k to show my equity and froze my account when I didn’t pay. With the 33.4 k, I have about 89.4k invested in their company and can’t get it out. I was doing ‘seconds futures’ with the help of this teacher I had met on WhatsApp […]

According to this Reddit thread, these scammers previously used the domain defieo.com.

Defieo Review Conclusion

Defieo, currently located at defieo.co, is a cryptocurrency investment scam.

The way it works is that an agent will contact you via WhatsApp and offer you to invest with the company, promising very high gains.

Victims invest tens of thousands of dollars to this platform and then see that their investment indeed grows.

However when they then try to widthdraw their funds, they are requested to pay a fee.

As long as they pay the fee, the scammers will try to extract more and more money from victims.

When the client is no longer willing to pay the fees, they will freeze their account and run away with the money.

Some people have lost their entire life savings to this scam.

When trying to recover the funds, victims may come across many fake recovery “experts,” who will convince you to pay them money in order to recover your funds, but they will again run away with your money without providing the service.

Fortunately, there is a way to get the money back.

There’s a legitimate and trustworthy cryptocurrency tracing and recovery company that can follow the money and locate the scammers.

Then, working in cooperation with law enforcement, they may be able to get your money back. 

If you have been scammed by these people, please share your story below this Defieo Scam Review.