Bobby Ong, the co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency data platform CoinGecko, has issued a public warning about a new phishing 0 fraudulent scheme uses fake emails that appear to come from Booking. com, inviting recipients to a non-existent “Exclusive Crypto Travel Summit” in Dubai. A Deceptive Invitation The phishing attempt, which Ong shared on social media, presented itself as a legitimate conference announcement, with the fake email claiming that 1 and Coinbase have formed a strategic partnership to launch a crypto travel 2 listed an impressive roster of keynote speakers, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, for an event supposedly happening in November 2025.
A key red flag is that the RSVP deadline for this future event was set in the past, for September 30, 2025, which pointed to recycled or hastily constructed scam 3 advised anyone receiving such an email to delete it immediately and urged 4 to escalate the issue to its security 5 official 6 account later acknowledged the issue in a reply to Ong’s post, saying, “We regret to hear that you are receiving fake emails,” and requested details via direct message to investigate. A Persistent Threat in Crypto This incident is not an isolated one but part of a wider pattern of scams targeting crypto 7 September, Binance issued two separate warnings about different types of 8 the first one, the exchange alerted the public about fake “listing agents” who were purportedly promising projects a spot on the platform for a fee.
A few days later, company CEO Richard Teng detailed a phone scam where impersonators posed as customer support 9 said that the fake helpers then guided users through changing their account’s API settings, a process that allowed the scammer to steal 10 community’s reaction to Ong’s warning was one of recognition and 11 social media user, SkylineETH, commented on the increasing complexity of these schemes, writing, “appreciate the warning, these scams keep leveling up.” Another user, Kevin Lee, expressed a common concern, questioning if there was a better way to handle email security to avoid even clicking ‘unsubscribe’ links in suspicious 12 sentiment was echoed by Ong, who noted that the adversarial nature of the crypto world requires people to carefully check every email they receive.
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