Another day, another X crypto phishing scam. An impersonator pretending to be renowned crypto trader Ansem – “@blknoiz06” on X – phished over $3 million in Solana (SOL) from followers. The scam came to light after it was revealed by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.
Scammer Capitalizes on Meme Coin Frenzy to Lure Victims to Crypto Phishing Scam
The scammer preyed on his victims by capitalizing on the current hype surrounding Solana-based meme coins. The impersonating account under the username “@blfnoiz06” promoted a fake presale for a non-existent token by replying to legitimate posts by Ansem.
Unsuspecting users clicked on the link thinking it was an initial coin offering (ICO) for the BULL token, only to be redirected to a wallet drainer.
The scammer masquerading as Ansem went on to share a presale link on multiple posts by the popular trader, saying that he was going to launch the “$BULL” token, and participants were required to send a minimum of 1 SOL and a maximum of 3 SOL to a wallet address to claim them.
Naive users who followed the instructions suffered significant losses, with the largest victim losing $1.2 million worth of SOL. Comically, hours after ZachXBT warned of the phishing scam, the culprit managed to pilfer an additional $250,000 from desperate individuals, raising the loot to almost $3 million.
However, questions were raised about whether these were real victims or just scammers moving their stolen stash to other places. The on-chain investigator confirmed that several of the victims, including the largest one, had contacted him directly to inform him about the scam.
February Saw Crypto Users Suffering a Collective Loss of $47 Million to Scams
Despite not being a new tactic, phishing scams involving influential actors in the crypto sphere appear to have increased more recently.
According to a report by Scam Sniffer, in February alone, approximately 57,000 individuals have fallen victim to similar scams, resulting in a collective loss of $47 million.
Scam Sniffer has urged its followers to stay vigilant after detecting several scammers using the impersonating tactic to prey on crypto investors.
The Web3 anti-scam group reported that the bad actors were taking advantage of NFT artists, Layer-2 blockchains, and liquid staking protocols.
The reason why scammers appear to be targeting the meme-coin frenzy is because recently many projects have raised millions in presale and investors are on the hunt for the next BONK or Dogwifhat tokens that will make them a big profit.
Crypto Figures Urge Users to Stay Vigilant and Take Precautions
When Solana-based meme token Slerf was launched, impersonators tried to take advantage of the situation where a developer accidentally burned the project’s liquidity pool and presale airdrop tokens, resulting in a loss of over $10 million for presale participants.
They created a fake account pretending to be the team behind the project and responded to a post by the real account, claiming that the mistake was a joke and providing a fraudulent link from where presale investors could get their promised tokens.
These cases have led to many crypto projects and personalities on X limiting who can reply to their posts and issuing warnings about possible scams. Some choose to end their posts with a note saying that any other related information or links won’t come from them.
There is no end in sight for crypto scams. They continue to take place at a large scale with users losing millions of dollars every month. Therefore, you must be careful of the crypto links shared with you on social media and ensure that you have taken adequate measures to protect your funds.
