With the impressive rise of Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets, the fame is motivating some shady dealings which hijack the message board’s name. A new Telegram crypto scam has disguised itself as a friend of r/WSB, and thieves are making off with a digital bag stuffed with users’ coins.
Bloomberg is reporting on a prominent scam that has drifted around instant-messaging app Telegram. Even as the r/WSB mods have taken it upon themselves to warn users of scams posing as WallStreetBets mods and users, many have still fallen victim to the scheme.
Telegram Crypto Scam Robs Users of Over $2 Million in Crypto Assets
So what happened? How much has this cost hopeful investors? Here’s the lowdown on the very costly Telegram crypto scam:
- Telegram features some r/WSB crossover; the scam took place through a “WallStreetBets Crypto Pumps” account.
- The user behind the scam advertised a crypto called “WSB Finance,” inviting other Telegram users to a private pre-sale of the fake crypto.
- The scammer promised thousands of WSBFINANCE in exchange for Binance Coin (CCC:BNB-USD) and Ethereum (CCC:ETH-USD).
- The phishing scam included a link to the scammer’s wallet, and succeeded in coaxing ETH and BNB from thousands of victims.
- Shortly after receiving swaths of BNB and ETH from users, the scammer came back, reporting an error with the exchange bot responsible for providing users with their new coins.
- The error had told users to send more BNB, or risk losing their entire investment.
- Shortly after this second phishing attempt, the wallet listed in the message saw 3,451 BNB removed from it. At current rates, the value of this BNB totals over $2 million.
- It is unknown how much ETH the scammer made off with in addition to the 3,451 BNB coins.
- The scammer came back shortly after withdrawing the coins from their wallets to taunt victims, leaving them with the final message: “buying lambo [sic] now.”
- The r/WSB moderators have pinned a scam alert to the top of the board for the last 15 days, stating that if users are operating outside of the r/WSB board, official Twitter, or official Discord channel, they are not using a legitimate r/WSB resource.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
