thorncapstead.shop is a fake crypto exchange calling itself Thorn Capstead and presenting as the official website of an automated, algorithm-driven trading platform. It targets people hoping for effortless crypto profits and dresses itself up as a legitimate investment service. PhishDestroy first detected it on 2026-09-18. As of 2026-10-19 the site was still online and serving its scam content.
How the scam works
Fake trading platforms like Thorn Capstead promise outsized returns from a smart trading engine and push visitors to open an account and fund it with cryptocurrency. After the first deposit, the dashboard typically displays fabricated gains to build trust and encourage larger top-ups. When the victim tries to withdraw, the site demands new fees, taxes or verification deposits, or simply freezes the account. Every coin sent is lost, and any identity documents submitted during sign-up can be reused for further fraud.
Evidence
On 2026-09-29, 17 of 91 VirusTotal engines flagged the domain as malicious. Detecting vendors include alphaMountain.ai, BitDefender, Chong Lua Dao, CRDF, CyRadar, ESET, Forcepoint ThreatSeeker and Fortinet. The domain also appears in 5 AlienVault OTX threat pulses and is listed on the PhishDestroy blocklist.
Infrastructure
The domain was registered on 2026-03-30 through Spaceship, Inc., roughly six months before PhishDestroy detected it. It resolves to 172.67.168.53 on Cloudflare, Inc. infrastructure, geolocated to Canada. The site uses a TLS certificate issued by Google Trust Services (WE1), so the browser padlock says nothing about whether the platform is legitimate.
What to do
Do not deposit funds or pay any withdrawal fee to thorncapstead.shop, and treat offers to recover your money for an upfront payment as part of the same fraud. If you already sent crypto, save the transaction hashes, receiving addresses and any chat logs, then report them to your local police, your national fraud reporting service and the exchange you sent the funds from. If you uploaded ID documents or reused a password, change that password everywhere and watch for identity misuse. Defenders should block the domain at DNS, proxy and email gateways and add it to their threat-intelligence feeds.
DOM Analysisanalyzed 2026年9月19日score 98/1002 brand signals
Submitted URLhttp://thorncapstead.shop/
Favicon Hash
ICANN OVERSIGHT
認定と RAA の背景
Registrar accreditation and DNS abuse obligations
For this gTLD, the registrar above operates under an ICANN accreditation agreement. The links below provide the official fee schedule and current DNS abuse compliance guidance.
Accreditation is a contract, not a safety certification.
RAA §3.18 establishes abuse-contact and handling requirements. This report can document stored outbound notices and later technical observations; it does not by itself establish receipt, investigation, remediation, or contractual non-compliance.
Saved certificate metadata. Certificate dates without a timezone are shown as stored. Transport encryption does not establish that the site is trustworthy.
Evidence layersAvailability: Content servingContent: Content served at rootDNS: ResolvedRegistration: Unknown
Latest HTTP observationコンテンツ公開中Ordinary HTTP content served90%2026-10-19 22:32:50 UTC
RDAP registration不明
Observed timelinelast reachable: 2026-10-19 22:35:39 UTClast content: 2026-10-19 22:32:50 UTC
Availability, content, DNS and registration are independent evidence layers. NXDOMAIN, an unreachable origin or missing content alone does not prove registrar action. A registrar or provider is credited only when a direct technical marker identifies that actor. Report causality is shown separately.
使用技術 · 5 identified
J
jsDelivr
CDN
JSDelivr is a free public CDN for open-source projects. It can serve web files directly from the npm registry and GitHub repositories without any configuration.
Cloudflare is a web-infrastructure and website-security company, providing content-delivery-network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain-name-server services.
Keep original emails, receipts, messages and screenshots in a secure place. A factual timeline helps the receiving authority understand what happened. IC3 evidence guidance ↗
Payment records — if you paid, save the receipt, amount, date, payment provider and recipient details.
Your bank or payment provider — contact its fraud team promptly through official contact details if money or card information was exposed.
地元の警察 — たとえ直ちに行動を起こせなくても、公式な記録が残される
A report is not a guarantee of recovery or investigation, but prompt, accurate transaction data can help authorities and service providers trace the incident.
詐欺による金銭の返還を装った詐欺 — fraudsters pose as recovery agents and demand upfront fees. Never share a seed phrase or pay before independently verifying the provider
About this reportSources, observation dates and corrections
This report combines saved page captures, registration and network records, scanner results and PhishDestroy reporting history. Each source keeps its own observation date. Open a source report to inspect the original result.
The AI-assisted analysis was written on . It describes the evidence available at that time; later source checks can change.
A capture documents what was shown. A scanner result records that provider’s assessment at the time of its check. Neither a valid certificate nor a zero-detection result is a guarantee of safety.
(US)
