Sonex-A mining scam
Sonex-A mining scam
A big hello to you all.
Today I am writing to share with you my experience with a cloud mining site named SONEX in the hope that being forewarned prevents a similar thing happening to you.
When I first became interested in Crypto I looked at the possibility of mining coins. Thinking, like many others, that it could be a possible route to securing a small passive income. However, my existing PC simply didn’t have enough power to hack mining coins so my thoughts turned to cloud mining.
Cloud mining, in case you do not know, is renting hash power from a mining farm online. The mining farm could be anywhere in the world, the location doesn’t really matter. What does matter, among other things, is if the company providing the hash power is legit and not a scam.
When I came across the sonex site it’s full address was SONEX. CLOUD. The site offered a small amount of free hash power to draw you in. It had a very clear and clean UI with no adds. so I took the bait and created a free account.
The hash power worked fine and what’s more I was able to get free hourly bonuses to bump up the hash power even more. Being very raw to cloud mining I had a few questions that I wanted to ask so contacted the site through their support email. I was answered swiftly which gave me the confidence to begin mining TRX coin with them.
Everything seemed to be going well and I soon reached the small minimum withdrawal limit of 200 TRX. At this point I requested a withdrawal and was paid within a few hours. Sweet! My first little mining success.
Encouraged by this I decided to invest 600 hard earned Doge coin to ramp up the hash power. All seemed good, the site acknowledged my Doge coin payment and my hash power increased to what I expected. Feeling confident I left the site alone for a while and just waited to again reach the 200 TRX minimum withdrawal.
After about three weeks I returned to the site to see if I had hit the magic number of 200 TRX and yes I had hit 250. It was at this point when things started to go wrong. I requested a withdrawal but was told by the site that the minimum withdrawal limit was now 500 TRX, more than double what it was previously. I emailed support, but got no reply. Nothing I could do now apart from wait again until the TRX clock ticked round to 500 and I’d try to withdraw again.
After quite a lengthy period had passed I went to log in to the site again, fingers crossed that I’d hit the magic 500. Uh, oh! What’s this the site no longer exists? After several attempts in the days following to locate the site again I gave up and reluctantly accepted that I had been scammed out of my 600 Doge coin.
However, a few months later I came across the site again but now it had the address SONEX.TOP. There was a message on the front of the site saying that “due to some people not being able to log in we have changed our address”. Would have been nice if they had emailed me to let me know was my first thought.
So, I logged in and saw I had mined 650 TRX. That’s 150 more than the 500 minimum withdrawal. Great! Let’s request my TRX then. What’s this? The minimum withdrawal limit is now 1000 TRX and guess what? No support link to be found on the site now. It’s looking more and more like a scam.
About a month later I headed over to the site again and to my surprise it was still there, I Logged in and I’ve now mined 1001 TRX. So straight over to the withdrawal link and Bingo withdrawal request accepted. It’s now more than 3 weeks since the withdrawal request was made and still no sign of the payment having been made.
So the lesson to be learned here I guess is to check the legitimacy of the site before you invest. If in doubt Google it. How long have they been going? Are there any reviews for the site? Can the site show you proof of payment? I am sure there are many legit mining sites out there but there’s also a lot that are scams.
Just prior to writing this I have noticed other sites with similar messages on them, proclaiming that they have changed their address due to technical issues or people not being able to log in. If you see this messages be very wary. Established legitimate sites are highly unlikely to change their address at a whim.
I hope this posting helps to save you from getting scammed.
Thanks for reading. Peter