A trader in the memecoin market suffered a devastating loss of $453,000 worth of PEPE today due to falling victim to a phishing scam. The incident occurred when the trader clicked on a link that authorized a malicious transaction on their wallet.
The scammer, operating through the addresses 0xfb4d3 and 0xfd178, successfully transferred over 356 billion PEPE tokens from the victim’s 0x9ea22 address. These addresses are associated with Inferno Drainer, a scam-as-a-service provider known for their involvement in multichain scams. It is reported that Inferno Drainer typically charges 20% of the stolen assets, according to Scam Sniffer.
Data obtained from Dune Analytics reveals that the scammers have already stolen assets exceeding $7 million from more than 5000 victims. Since March 27, they have created approximately 700 phishing sites, targeting various popular projects.
In the comments section, an additional user reported losing a staggering 2.7 billion PEPE tokens to the same phishing scam and is currently seeking methods to recover their funds.
Scammer Pink Drainer generated $110,000
In a separate incident, a different phishing scammer named Pink Drainer managed to generate approximately $110,000 in profit. This was achieved by compromising the Twitter account of OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and utilizing it to promote a phishing scam.
Read also: Introduction to Cybersecurity Threats and NFT Scams
Based on data obtained from Dune analytics, the scammer has successfully victimized a total of 880 individuals, resulting in a combined loss of $2.3 million. Pink Drainer employed phishing links to gain unauthorized access to numerous wallets, where they proceeded to pilfer ERC-20 tokens, ETH (Ethereum), and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).
The same malicious individual orchestrated the breach of the Orbiter Finance Discord server on June 1, resulting in a theft of $213,000 from the victims. Prior to this incident, they were also responsible for the eth_ben quote tweet phishing scam, which had 484 victims at that time.
According to Scam Sniffer, the hacker has displayed remarkable productivity when it comes to crafting phishing websites, having created over 85 such sites in just the past two months.
Among the affected individuals, one user stands out as the biggest loser, having lost NFTs valued at $297,000 to the scammer. These NFTs include 8 Otherside Koda, 1 Bored Ape, 1 Mutant Ape, and 11 Otherdeed.
The targeting of memecoins by scam-as-a-service providers emphasizes the increasing sophistication of phishing scams within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Peckshield commented on this trend in May, stating:
They artificially drove up the price of these scam tokens to attract a significant number of investors and then executed a series of rugpulls
Read also about the biggest rug pulls in history.
Featured image was taken from BeInCrypto.com