Crypto scammers have finally found their thieving match: Themselves.
A new scam is afoot mainly on YouTube that will make even the most cunning fraudster tip their hat, security firm Kaspersky said in a security update last week.
“I have USDT stored in my wallet, and I have a seed phrase. How do I transfer my funds to another wallet?,” Kaspersky said in one such comment. That particular wallet has over $8,000 worth of stablecoins on the Tron blockchain. A seed phrase is a word string that gives those who know it access to a crypto wallet.
This question, however, is not from a crypto novice but a cleverly laid trap. Those stablecoins are held in a multi-signature wallet, and theoretically require a gas fee to withdraw funds.
However, when the thieves tried to siphon the funds by sending Tron’s TRX tokens to the wallet, the sent tokens mysteriously evaporated in another wallet controlled by the scammers.
The catch is that the pain wallet is set up as a multi-signature wallet. To allow outgoing transactions in such wallets, approval is required from two or more people, so transferring USDT to a personal wallet will not work and will instead be transferred elsewhere.
“Scammers impersonate naive novices who share access to their crypto wallets, fooling naive thieves – who end up becoming victims,” Kaspersky said. “In this situation, scammers are like digital Robin Hoods, as the scheme primarily targets other crooked individuals.”
This scam is not a lone wolf either, with several instances on the internet filled with similar comments from new accounts, all of which hang on the same seed phrase, Kaspersky said.
As such, gas bills are typically cheap and cost less than $10 on most blockchains, meaning the rush is likely targeting wannabe thieves rather than being a complex operation aimed at stealing thousands, or even millions, of dollars.
But expect a crypto criminal to make money every chance he gets.
