Pepe Memecoin Holder Losses $450K in Phishing Attack

In Brief

• A phishing scam led to a substantial loss, with 356 billion PEPE tokens being stolen.
• The scammer has illicitly obtained assets totaling over $7 million in value.
• According to Peckshield, the surge in popularity of memecoins has resulted in a significant increase in the creation of fraudulent tokens.

A memecoin trader lost $453,0000 worth of PEPE to a phishing scam earlier today after clicking on a link that approved a malicious transaction on his wallet.
In two transactions, the scammer siphoned more than 356 billion PEPE tokens from the victim’s 0x9ea22 address. The phishing scammer addresses 0xfb4d3 and 0xfd178 are associated with Inferno Drainer, a scam as a service provider. According to Scam Sniffer, the vendor specializes in multichain scams and usually charges 20% of the stolen assets.

Data from Dune Analytics showed that the scammers were responsible for stealing assets worth over $7 million from more than 5000 victims. Usually, the scammers created about 700 phishing sites since March 27, targeting various trending projects.

Meanwhile, another user in the comments claimed they lost 2.7 billion PEPE to the same phishing scam and are now looking for ways to retrieve the funds.

Another Phisher Made $2.3M From 880 Victims
Another phishing scammer Pink Drainer stole about $110,000 after hacking the Twitter account of OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and using it to promote a phishing scam.

According to data from Dune analytics, the scammer now has 880 total victims making $2.3 million. He has accessed several wallets through phishing links, stealing ERC-20 tokens, ETH, and NFTs.

The same bad actor was responsible for the hack of the Orbiter Finance Discord server on June 1 and stole $213,000 from victims in that attack. Before then, they were also behind the eth_ben quote tweet phishing scam. At the time, the hacker had 484 victims.

Scam Sniffer also reported that the hacker has been very prolific regarding phishing websites and has created over 85 in the last two months alone.

The biggest loser so far has one user who lost $297,000 worth of NFTs to the scammer. These include 8 Otherside Koda, 1 Bored Ape, 1 Mutant Ape, and 11 Otherdeed.

Scammers Target Memecoins
The emergence of scam-as-a-service providers highlights the level of sophistication that phishing scams are attaining in the crypto ecosystem. In May, several scammer gangs created dozens of fraudulent tokens that mimic popular memecoins. Peckshield said:“They artificially drove up the price of these scam tokens to attract a significant number of investors and then executed a series of rugpulls.”

Disclaimer
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