Don’t Move, This Is a Crypto Robbery! Cryptocurrency Scams in 2022

The year of 2022 has been challenging for the world of cryptocurrencies in many ways. Ups and downs, a series of astonishing bankruptcies and, of course, high-profile cases of fraud. Modern hackers are paying more and more attention to the crypto industry. People with a dark past cannot resist trying to bite off a piece of the trillion-cap pie. Today we will talk about the most high-profile cryptocurrency scams in 2022. Buckle up, we’re getting started!

The sad case of the “bored monkey”

An NFT collection called Bored Ape Yacht Club has become one of the examples of a stunning success. Needless to say, many crypto-enthusiasts dream of being an owner of this famous NFT series. BAYC is taking the second place in the top collections on OpenSea.

Of course, scammers couldn’t just camly pass by it. In 2022, they regularly stole expensive tokens, as a result of which BAYC and related collections lost millions of dollars. Let’s take a look at the most notorious cases:

• On March 31, the Discord service announced that the server of the NFT project had been hacked. Almost immediately it became known that Mutant Ape Yacht Club #8662 no longer belongs to the owner.
• Users didn’t have time to come to their senses, as in the same month the Instagram page of the community was hacked. This has led to a phishing attack that stole NFTs worth a total of $ 2.8 million from people who fell for the bait.
• In May, the well-known actor and creator of Robot Chicken, Seth Green, became a victim of a scam. The artist lost four exclusive NFTs at once, including the pearl of his collection — Bored Ape #8398. He has lost about $300 thousand. Due to that scam Green was forced to postpone the launch of the new comedy series called ‘White Horse Tavern’. Because NFT #8398 was supposed to become the main character of the project. Later, the actor managed to buy the token for $297,000.
• In early June, a phishing attack again gave results. Scammers used a standard scheme: a hacked Discord server and malicious mailing. Another raid ended with the theft of three dozen NFTs. It is known for sure that among them there was one BAYC, two Mutant Ape Yacht Club tokens and one Bored Ape Kennel. Damage was worth at least $360,000.

It is important to note that the mentioned facts of hacker attacks are only the loudest episodes. Experts talk about multimillion-dollar losses among the owners of BAYC and similar collections.

Given that 2022 is far from over, the NFT project should be prepared for continued attacks.

Arbix Finance: the story of a $10 million exit scam

When it comes to the phenomenon of rag pool, many crypto users start to experience eye twitches. This criminal scheme involves the creation of a token linked to a well-known digital currency and then it is distributed through DeFi.

As soon as gullible traders invest their hard-earned money in a new coin, the creators of the cryptocurrency quickly withdraw funds and disappear afterwards. In other words, scammers “pull the rug” out from under the victim. As a result, instead of the promised high profit, users were left with nothing.

At the end of 2021, a new yield farming platform called Arbix Finance was actively promoted. It was created on the basis of Binance Smart Chain and even passed the verification of Certik. The Certik specializes in cryptographic audits, which did not reveal any problems with Arbix Finance.

The platform lured investors with the promise of a good income with minimal risk. As expected, there were enough interested traders who bought ARBX tokens. But the creators of Arbix made an exit scam.

In January 2022, investors were shocked in a bad way. Using access rights to the smart contract of the token, the management approved the unauthorized release of coins. The creators of the platform quickly sent 10 million ARBX to 8 different addresses. Next, scammers converted the coins to Ethereum through the AnySwap exchange and laundered the assets using the Tornado.cash protocol. By the time everyone has found out about the scam, the creators of Arbix Finance cut off all ends.

Rocketman Kim: $1 billion in stolen crypto and a nuclear missile for North Korea

North Korean hackers have long been a symbol of the ever-present invisible threat. People began to see them everywhere, and even Hollywood celebrities can envy these guys in terms of media level. And as we know, there is no smoke without a fire.

At the end of June, the Harmony platform was hacked. As a result of scam, the hackers got $100 million in cryptocurrency. One of the largest thefts of digital assets was made possible by hacking the Horizon Ethereum Bridge.

Three specialized companies undertook to investigate the high-profile crime at once. These are well-known experts in data analysis and the fight against Internet fraud: chainalysis, elliptic, TRM Labs.

Employees of all three firms came to the conclusion that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on the Horizon Bridge. To be more precise, the thread led to one of the most famous hacker organizations — Lazarus Group. Experts came to this conclusion after analyzing the nature of the hack and the methods of money laundering.

The US Department of Defense believes that all stolen funds by Lazarus Group are used to finance North Korea’s missile program.

These are three loud cases of crypto scams of 2022. Are there more of them out there? For sure. Which interesting crypto frauds are you aware of? Let us know in the comments!

SimpleSwap is wishing you to stay safe. In this article you can learn how to avoid crypto scam schemes. And don’t forget that the easiest way to buy or exchange crypto coins is to use SimpleSwap services.

Originally published on our Publish0x blog.

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