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Crypto Miners Direct

Buying guide

How to Verify an ASIC Miner Seller and Avoid Scams

Confirm that a mining hardware seller is a real company and that the payment details are its own, and know what to do when something does not match.

Last reviewed October 5, 2026 by James Emerson

To verify an ASIC miner seller, confirm three things through sources the seller does not control: the company exists as a registered legal entity, the website, email addresses and people you deal with belong to it, and the payment details are its own. Do this before any money moves. A bank transfer is hard to recall, and the FTC notes that cryptocurrency payments typically are not reversible.

Key points

  • Contact the seller through details you found on its own website, never through the message that reached you.
  • Find the company in the official business registry. The registered name, the invoice and the bank account holder should match.
  • Take payment details only from the seller's own site or order page, or confirm them on a channel you obtained independently.
  • Read a crypto address in full and never copy one from your wallet's transaction history.
  • If something seems wrong, stop paying, contact your bank or exchange at once and report it.

Fraud patterns in hardware sales

The FTC lists four signs of a scam: the scammer pretends to be from an organisation you know, claims a problem or a prize, pressures you to act immediately, and tells you to pay in a specific way. In hardware sales they look like this.

Pattern What it looks like What to check
Cloned or look-alike site A real seller's site copied to a domain one character off or with an extra word The domain, letter by letter, against one you reached independently
Price far below market A current model well below every other quote Several quotes. An outlier is a warning, not a bargain
Pressure to pay fast Stock "reserved" for two hours, a discount ending today A written quotation with a validity date
Payment by chat or personal email Bank details or a wallet address sent by messaging app, social media or free webmail Where the seller's own website says payment details are issued
Changing payment details A message, often mid-deal, announcing a new account or wallet A call to a number you found yourself
Agent or distributor claims "Authorised distributor" offered as a reason to trust The claim, with the manufacturer, through the manufacturer's own website
Impersonated staff Real employees' names on a look-alike email domain The person, through the company's main phone number
Fake shipping or tracking A tracking link to an unfamiliar site, or a number the carrier cannot find The number on the carrier's own site, reached by typing its address

The FBI has described criminals impersonating real companies with spoofed email domains and the display names of current or former employees. For company.com, its examples of spoofed domains include co-pany.com, company-usa.com and companygroup.com.

For tracking, the FTC advises ignoring links in shipping messages, contacting the carrier through a website or phone number you know is real, and checking delivery status on the site where you ordered.

Verify the company

  1. Find the legal entity in the official business registry where the seller says it is incorporated. In the UK, Companies House shows the registered address, date of incorporation, current and resigned officers and previous names free of charge. In the EU, the Business Registers Interconnection System gives a single point of access to national registers through the European e-Justice Portal. In the US, most states require businesses to register with the Secretary of State's office or a similar agency.
  2. Match the address and phone number across the registry, website, invoice and email signature. A difference needs a plain explanation, such as a registered office separate from a warehouse.
  3. Check domain and email consistency. The email domain should be exactly the website domain. A hardware seller using free webmail is a warning. ICANN's free registration data lookup can show when a domain was created, where the registry publishes that date. A new domain does not prove fraud, but it does not fit a claim of long trading.
  4. Test claims of authorisation with the manufacturer, through contact details on the manufacturer's own website. Treat an unconfirmed claim as no claim.
  5. Get the terms in writing, in the legal entity's name: the warranty (who honours it, from what date, for how long) and the return terms (dead-on-arrival window, who pays return freight). How to Buy a Bitcoin Miner lists what a proforma invoice should carry.

Verify contacts through the company, not the message. The FTC's advice is to use a phone number, website or email address you know is real, never the contact details in an unexpected message. For this site, the verification page lists the official contact details and domains to check a message against.

Pay safely

Where payment details come from

Pay only to details shown on the seller's own website or order page, or confirmed through a channel you obtained independently. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) advises using secondary channels to verify any request to change account information. A bank beneficiary should be the registered legal entity, not an individual or another company.

On cryptominersdirect.com, each order's payment details are shown only on that order's own page. Each cryptocurrency payment gets its own receiving address, so copy the address from the order page each time, never from an earlier order or your wallet history. Bank details are issued only after an order has been reviewed, and the site states that it never sends a payment address or bank details by chat or social media. Payment information explains the process.

Read the whole address

MetaMask describes address poisoning as a scam in which an attacker sends you a tiny transaction from an address that closely resembles one you have used, hoping you will copy it by mistake. Etherscan explains that the fake matches the first and last few characters of the real address, so the two look identical when shortened on screen, and that tiny or zero-value transfers put it in your history.

  1. Never copy a payment address from your wallet's transaction history.
  2. Copy it from the seller's payment page, paste it, then compare every character. MetaMask advises paying particular attention to the middle characters.
  3. For a payee with a fixed address you pay repeatedly, save it in your wallet's address book once verified.
  4. On a hardware wallet, check the address on the device's own screen before approving.

Test before the balance

Where practical, send a small first payment, have the seller confirm receipt through its official channel, then send the balance to details verified the same way. If the payment page sets an exact amount for a one-time address, ask the seller through an official channel before splitting the payment.

Controls for batch orders

  • One person enters the payment, a second checks it against the seller's site and the call-back record.
  • Call back on a number from the seller's website or the registry, and record who confirmed what, and when.
  • Read the sender's full email address, not only the display name. IC3 advises checking it especially on a phone.
  • Agree staged payments against written milestones where the seller will.

If something seems wrong

  1. Stop. Send nothing more until you have verified the request through official contacts you found yourself. For an order on this site, check the message against the verification page.
  2. If you paid by bank transfer, call your bank now. IC3 advises contacting your bank as soon as fraud is recognised to request a recall or reversal. In the UK, Report Fraud advises notifying your bank immediately, using a verified number or 159.
  3. If you paid in crypto, contact the exchange you sent it from, which the FTC lists as a place to report. Keep the transaction ID, address, amount and time.
  4. Keep evidence: messages, emails, web addresses, screenshots, invoices and bank references.
  5. Report it (table below). Report Fraud also advises telling the organisation whose name was used.
  6. Ignore recovery offers. The FTC warns not to pay anyone who contacts you offering to recover money lost to a scam. IC3 states that it will never contact you directly for information or money.
  7. Consult a lawyer about any civil claim.
Where you are Where to report
United States FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and IC3 at ic3.gov
England, Wales, Northern Ireland Report Fraud at reportfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040. It replaced Action Fraud in December 2025
Scotland Police Scotland on 101
UK, suspicious emails and websites Forward emails to report@phishing.gov.uk. Report scam websites to the NCSC
EU member states Your country's reporting website, linked from Europol's Report Cybercrime page, or your local police station
Elsewhere Your national police or cybercrime unit

Sources