Crypto Scammers Rip Off Billions as Pump-and-Dump Schemes Go Digital
Billions are getting pilfered annually through a variety of cryptocurrency scams. The way things are going, this will only get worse.
The word went out on Twitter: Safetrade was supposedly “rug proof.” The person or persons behind it couldn’t cut and run. An account that promotes meme coins, Crypto Gems, was urging their followers to get in — and get in fast. (Crypto Gems didn’t reply to messages from Bloomberg; whoever is behind it couldn’t be reached.)
It was April 10, a Saturday, and Safetrade was getting buzz across social media. People were saying this looked like the next “it” coin. Robert Turner placed $50 on Safetrade through PancakeSwap, one of the most popular decentralized exchanges for meme coins.
A couple of days later, the rug got pulled. Or at least that’s what Turner thinks happened. He was monitoring Safetrade on Poocoin.com, a scatologically named crypto platform, when the price collapsed to nearly zero in less than a minute. He checked the Safetrade Telegram group. Deleted. Members had been kicked out.
That’s when things got really weird. Minutes later, Turner got a private message from someone on Telegram. The person was offering to help recover his money. All Turner had to do was transfer any remaining tokens from his digital wallet to theirs.
“You need to send the remaining balance of the Safetrade to the burn wallet we will assign you too,” the anonymous user wrote to him. “This is a professional issue, I’m not going to scam you, I’m here to resolve this issue.”
Turner, a 42-year-old software engineer in Melbourne, Australia, smelled trouble. He didn’t do it. Turner says his tokens were worth pennies by that point. But then, pennies can add up. “If he was able to collect enough from various people, they could be worth quite a bit,” he says of the supposed Good Samaritan.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-08/crypto-scams-rug-pulls-bitcoin-hacks-billions-lost-when-shit-coins-go-to-zero?srnd=premium-asia