CashCrates.co Review – Another Scam Exposed

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Are you looking for an honest review on Cash Crates, the website that pays you to share a link with your friends and social media following?

I’ve decided to do this CashCrates.co review after seeing a couple of my friends sharing their links on Whatsapp.

At first, I thought it was the original Cash Crate, a totally legit website that existed during the MySpace era but after taking a closer look, I realized that the income promises were too good to be true and that this was a completely different website.

Cash Crates wants to give you a $50 sign up bonus, $10 for every friend you refer and $2 for each click you get on your link. These are not realistic payout commissions for a website where members sign up for free and has no paid membership options.

But we’ll see in the review why this website offers these types of payouts.

Is it a legit website?
Or is it just another scam?
Will you get paid?

These are all good questions to ask yourself before you sign up and I’ll answer them with evidence in this article.

If you read my previous article on Plenty Bread, then CashCrates.co is identical in its operations and has all the same red flags as that site.

What Is CashCrates.co All About?

Cash Crates says that they’re the #1 earning network, but elsewhere on the site, I see that they’re claiming to be an affiliate network.

They claim that as a member of their network, you can earn money on Instagram by referring your followers for a $15 commission for each person who joins Cash Crates. Each person who signs up is promised a $50 signup bonus. Furthermore, you’re also promised $2 for every click on your special link.

There are only three steps to earning and if you really try to put 2 and 2 together, it really makes no sense in terms of where they get the money to pay you.

The three steps are:

1. Sign up for FREE (you get $50)
2. Share your link (you get $2 for clicks and $10 for signups)
3. Withdraw your earnings.

For every person who signs up to Cash Crates for free, they’ll pay out $62 but there isn’t a paid membership upgrade. So where does the money come from?

This isn’t a problem for Cash Crates because they’ve already set everything up so that they don’t have to pay you.

No matter how hard you work and how many hundreds or thousands of dollars you make, you will never get paid by Cash Crates.

Here’s Why CashCrates.co Won’t Pay You

The red flags may not be so easy to catch for most people but with years of experience checking out scams and warning thousands of people through my reviews, I know exactly what to look for.

Besides the promised payouts being too good to be true, there are some things you will find throughout the CashCrates.co website that gives evidence that this entire thing is a scam.

Stuff like:

1. You Must Be 99 Years of Age or Older to use Cash Crates

I’m willing to bet that you, reading this, are way younger than 99 years old.

And most, if not 100% of the people signing up to Cash Crates, aren’t that old either.

When you sign up to Cash Crates, you check a box agreeing to their Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy and Fraud Policy, each of which are linked to their respective pages so that you can read them.

Pages like these are usually filled with lots of legal jargon and are boring to read. Most people just check the box and continue.

But hidden in the Terms and Conditions of the Cash Crates site is a line that clears them from any liability regarding any claims by their members.

The line basically states that “by using the Cash Crates site, you represent, warrant and covenant that you are 99 years of age or older. If you are under 99 years of age, you are not allowed to use the Cash Crates site.”

How slimy is that?

If you end up requesting payment and it is not paid to you, and let’s say you manage to get into contact with someone on Cash Crates, all they would need to do is to ask you to confirm your date of birth. After you do this, you probably won’t hear anything else from them.

You’re not 99 years old as yet so you shouldn’t be using Cash Crates.co. This alone is everything you need to know to realize that Cash Crates is a scam.

2. They’ve Only Been Around a Couple of Months

Cash Crates will tell you on their “About” page that they’ve been around since 2015, partnered with big brands like Walmart and Subway and that they’ve risen to become the #1 influencer network over those 5 years.

But how long as Cash Crates really been around? I’ve never heard about CashCrates.co until recently.

I checked their domain registration info for clues.

The domain cashcrates.co was only registered on April 11th, 2020 – this year!

This means that their entire story is fabricated.

Well, I actually didn’t need to check to see that the story is made up. Plenty Bread, which I reviewed here, is an identical scam that uses the same story.

Is it coincidence that both companies say that they were formed in 2015 and claim to be the #1 influencer network? And how come both companies registered their domains in April, 2020?

Actually, there are a lot more sites just like Plenty Bread and Cash Crates that claim to have started in 2015 but in fact had their domain name registered this year and they all claim to be the #1 influencer network.

All those sites have similar design and work the same way. You sign up, promote your link and you don’t get paid.

This is yet another sign that Cash Crates isn’t being so honest with users. They don’t even have an original story.

3. They Don’t Know Where They’re From

On the “About” page of Cash Crates, they say that they’re based in South London but on their “Contact” page, they give their address as:

Koningin Beatrixstraat 46, De Lier, Zuid-Holland 2678 EE,
Netherlands

In their Terms and Conditions, they give their address as:

Cash Crates, PTY, Melbourne, Australia

Are they based in the Netherlands? Or in the UK? Or are they from Australia?

I did a Google search for the Netherlands address and found that the same address is used by two clones of this scam. Two other sites namely, OGDollars.com (formerly EarnandGo) and FameCash.co both use this same Netherlands address.

Plenty Bread, also claims they’re from Melbourne, Australia – more evidence that all these sites are running the same scam.

How They Trick You Into Thinking They’re Legit

Cash Crates needs to convince their members that they are real and not a scam.

They’ve devised some ways to trick members into thinking that they’re the real deal and they do this better than most of the other site running the same scam.

They do this by providing answers to the following questions.

• Do they pay? Solution: they posted payment proofs.
• What do other sites say about them? Solution: they point members to handpicked reviews
• Who should I listen to? Solution: have an active social media presence

These are the three main ways in which they counter the scam claims and try to convince people that they are actually legit and not a scam company.

But let’s take a closer look at these three methods and we’ll see that these solutions are actually filled with lies and make them look even more like the scam site that they are.

Payment Proofs Are Fake

One thing most users care about more than anything else is getting paid for their efforts. Even if the company was completely illegal, people would probably still use them as long as they got paid.

Cash Crates do not pay their members and this is because their payouts are too unrealistic. Remember that they have to pay about $67 every time someone new registers on their site for a FREE account with no paid upgrades. They do not make money on member registrations.

If they aren’t paying members, how is it that they have payment proof from persons on social media?

Cash Crates previously ran this exact scam as a website called Earn and Go. As Earn and Go, they also posted payment proof. Below, you’ll see on the left the payment proofs for Earn and Go and on the right, you’ll see the proof for Cash Crates.

You’ll see that both images are almost the same except for a couple of the images in the collage. The images in the first collage have the Earn and Go logo while those in the second collage have all been altered to have the Cash Crates logo.

How can Cash Crates have the same payment proofs as Earn and Go?

This shows that no one is really getting paid from Cash Crates. Instead they’re just faking their payment proofs which can all be done by having a talented graphics designer.

The Scammers Own the Review Sites

If members start having doubts about Cash Crates, they may want to look for Cash Crates reviews but Cash Crates have decided to stay one step ahead and point them in the direction of reviews about Cash Crates.

Inside the members area, there is a section where you can earn $25 for reading reviews of Cash Crates. You must spend at least 5 minutes on each review page to get paid.

These reviews are from such publications as:

• The Scam Finder Blog by Nathaniel Joneis
• Fraud Reveal Blog by Spencer Roveilli
• Fraud Spotter Blog by Luis Mancionette
• Fraud Observer Blog by Even Elevenor

Obviously, these reviews turn out to be positive and label Cash Crates as a legit website that pays.

The sites all use a bit of psychology to help users think that Cash Crates is legit by including other reviews of scam sites labeled as such.

I think that one blog mentioned that they aren’t affiliated with Cash Crates but I had a small hunch about something and turned out to be right.

The Cash Crates domains was registered through a registrar named Tucows. Their name servers are ryan.ns.cloudflare.com and brianna.ns.cloudflare.com

I noticed that when I did the domain name check to see when they registered the domain. So my hunch was that if I checked the domain registration info for all these review sites, they’d all be registered through Tucows and hosted on the same nameservers which would mean that they’re all owned by whoever owns Cash Crates.

I was right.

With the exception of fraudreveal.com, all the other sites were registered on the same day in October 2019 but they were all registered through Tucows and they are all hosted on the same server as Cash Crates. So they’re all owned by the same guy.

This means that they could write their own reviews and position themselves as a legit company.

If you are looking for real reviews though, the best way would be by doing a Google search and checking blogs that have no affiliation with this company. Just as you would have done to end up on this website.

They Have an Active Social Media Presence

It is rare to see activity on social media from the companies running these scams. Most scammers are never interactive with their members and prefer to maintain silence.

This is something that CashCrates does better than the other sites that run this same scam. They have all their social media accounts set up on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter and they’re all active with posts and recent activity.

This activity includes encouraging members to do tasks, posting proofs of payments, reposting fake testimonials from users, assuring members they’re legit and they’ll get paid.

As I’m writing this, their Facebook page which has over 20,000 followers, has posts from 2 and 4 hours ago and all have comments with people sharing their links and others asking why they didn’t get paid.

Their Twitter page which was active when I started writing this review a day ago was suspended when I checked just now. So is their Instagram page – previously active, now removed.

Their YouTube channel has 176,000 subscribers with 22 videos that have thousands of views most averaging around 10K views.

Seeing that their pages are being removed from social media may be an indication that they’re being reported as frauds. This could mean that the Cash Crates scam is coming to an end. Maybe soon they’ll get rid of this site but they’ll probably be back with another one.

Having active social media presence is just a facade and a way to try to convince people that they were legit but also gives users a way to spread the word about their dishonesty.

They Let You Cash Out

But cashing out doesn’t mean that you’re getting paid. It just kinda gives you hope that you’d get your money.

When you cash out, you get a confirmation telling you that you’ve cashed out and the amount you’ve cashed out (what you’re supposed to receive). However, there seems to be a 14 day wait between when you cash out and your “1st payment schedule”.

From what I’ve seen people who cash out seem to think that it isn’t a scam because they’re able to cash out and it looks like CashCrates is sending them their money after all.

They’re usually disappointed after a couple of weeks when their scheduled payment doesn’t come through.

Cash Crates appears to be legit because they add a line at the end of the confirmation notice that instructs the user to share on social media for more earnings. So it looks like people are getting paid. In reality, they’re not and they weren’t ever going to get paid.

Why Is Cash Crates Doing This?

So why is Cash Crates actually doing this?

As I mentioned before, they’re offering some very big payouts for a site where people sign up completely free. You do not pay for training, you do not pay for special upgrades or anything.

How can they afford to pay out what they’re offering?

Well, here’s the reason.

Whoever runs the Cash Crates site (and similar sites) is an affiliate marketer promoting CPA offers that they find on CPA affiliate networks.

With CPA offers, the affiliate gets paid a commission for each offer they can successfully get someone to take an action on. This action can be submitting an email address, or signing up for a free trial by confirming their credit card. Once an action is completed, the affiliate gets paid.

CPA means “cost per action” or sometimes “cost per acquisition”.

Because sometimes the offer pays out more money than what is sometimes collected upfront so the advertiser is paying for an acquisition of a customer. An example could be an insurance company paying $25 for every person who completes a form requesting a quote. They’re going to pay for this information because they can follow up with the prospect and potentially make way more money down the line to cover this initial cost.

So Cash Crates has a section in the members area called a task wall where they list tasks for members to complete and make money. This is where Cash Crates make their money – money that they’ll never share with their members.

At my present location, no tasks are available under “surveys” ($50 task wall) because most of these are actually only available to US, Canada and UK residents but I found a screenshot of what some of the tasks look like.

When you complete these tasks, here’s what happens.

1. You enter your email address and complete the steps.
2. The advertiser pays Cash Crates a few dollars for getting the action completed. He will get this money.
3. Your Cash Crates account is credited with money that you’ll never get.
4. You never get your gift card because the advertiser is a lot of cases is just collecting email addresses so that they could sell or send spam messages to. Look forward to your inbox getting some unwanted email from now on. Also they never send the gift card because they have fine print that says you’re entered into a draw to “win” the gift card.

Then there are the more profitable offers that pay Cash Crates even more money. These usually ask for more information such as taking a free trial and confirming your credit card. This is usually anything from $10 to $50, sometimes more.

These offers will say that you get a free trial to maybe watch movies online or try some software. If you forget to cancel the free trial, they’ll charge your card. Sometimes, they’ll even include a check box that is already checked for another offer that will also charge your card if you’re not careful. You’re only going to know when you check your credit card statement.

By this time, you’ve lost money and Cash Crates has already got paid for getting the required action done on the offer.

Cash Crates wants as many people as they can get into the site so that they can have lots of people completing these offers. They’ve set it up so that you do all the hard work of getting people to sign up by offering high payouts for as many actions as you can do.

The fact that there are a bunch of sites perpetrating this scam makes me think that there is someone that is teaching this method that is not only unethical but scary.

Here is a list of some sites that you could check out that run the same scam as CashCrates.co. You’ll see that they use the same site design and the offer pretty much the same high payouts for referring members.

In most cases they just change the logo and customize the site a bit. I’m not going to link to them but you can open another browser tab and check them if you like.

Legit Way To Really Get Paid Online

Cash Crates presented an easy way to possibly make money online without doing much. The problem is that making money online takes a bit of effort.

Even the guy who created CashCrates did his share of work and was able to make money with his scams.

There are many legitimate ways to make money online including ecommerce, dropshipping, freelance writing, blogging, paid surveys and affiliate marketing.

I prefer to do affiliate marketing because it means that I can just promote other people’s products without having to deal directly with customers, carry stock and I can work from anywhere in the world.

Affiliate marketing is easy to learn and if you’ve joined a site like Cash Crates and promoted them then you have a little experience with how affiliate marketing works. The only difference is that you will get paid with affiliate marketing because you can join an affiliate network and get to promote offers that make a difference in people’s lives.

If learning affiliate marketing interests you then you can check out Wealthy Affiliate, a site where you can get free training and access to tools and resources as well as support and community interaction.

They’ll teach you how to build a business online buy running your own website and making money from affiliate marketing offers.

I’ve been with that site for over 12 years and I’m doing affiliate marketing full time after quitting my regular job in 2009. The site is free to join and you’ll get access to me if you need to ask questions.

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Did you get scammed by Cash Crates? Tell me your experience below in the comments and let others see how that site is dangerous.