Fake Uniswap, Wintermute Reps Con Californian Crypto Curious

Californian regulators have issued consumer warnings against 16 crypto broker scams, with one victim losing $14,000 to a fake Uniswap venture

article-image

solarseven/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has issued fraud alerts about phony entities posing as decentralized exchange Uniswap and crypto market maker Wintermute.

The alerts came alongside posts for 14 other registered entities apparently peddling crypto-themed Advance Fee scams.

In one instance, the victim claimed a “UniSwap LLC” lured them into investing $14,000 in what was presented as a Uniswap liquidity mining venture.

Per DFPI: “The victim met a person calling themselves ‘Heitor Ryan’ on the internet who claimed to work at a bank. They chatted as friends for several months, then Heitor lured the victim into investing on a crypto website that turned out to be a fraud.”

Another victim in a separate scam was convinced to send more than $167,000 to who they believe was crypto trading outfit Wintermute.

“The victim met someone calling herself ‘Rosalie’ on WhatsApp, who introduced him to eth-Wintermute dot net, telling the victim this would generate dividends on liquidity pools every six hours based on the amount of money put into the MetaMask app wallet,” DFPI wrote (Blockworks advises caution when interacting with the quoted domain).

Phishers and other bad actors commonly spoof popular crypto platforms to target digital asset investors. Users are advised to always triple check the domains they interact with. 

But 2022 will perhaps go down as the biggest year of crypto-related frauds in history so far, thanks in no small part to the Sam Bankman-Fried case.

Between January to November, investors lost more than $4 billion worth of crypto — a 37% jump from last year, according to a study by Privacy Affairs.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Ethena Labs is leaping from its flagship synthetic dollar, USDe, to a full product suite—USDtb, iUSDe, and the Arbitrum-based Converge Chain—designed to marry crypto-native yields with TradFi-grade compliance. Our analysis shows how expanding into CME, ETF options, and tokenized Treasuries could lift protocol revenue from sub-$500 million in a bear case to several billion dollars if favorable regulation and institutional adoption align.

article-image

“Bitcoin does not require a strong equity rally to move higher,” YouHodler markets chief Ruslan Lienkha said

article-image

President Trump’s comments that he will not look to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell sent stocks higher in after-hours trading Tuesday

article-image

The trading card game will use Immutable’s zkEVM chain

article-image

From Ethereum primitive to multichain coordination layer, Symbiotic, EigenLayer, Puffer and MoreMarkets are evolving restaking

article-image

Satoshi’s “moved on to other things” is Bitcoin’s “return some video tapes”

article-image

Base’s Jesse Pollak spoke to Blockworks about his bullish case for content coins and how he’s approaching a real-time learning curve