Bitcoin Forum

This is the first time I've been scammed and I haven't seen any post about this technique before. Like everyone; I see scamming attempts on a daily basis. Send 0.1 ETH and I'll triple it; Visit B1nance.com; Submit your private key here, etc.

I thought I was pretty good at recognizing them. When I'm bored; I participate in a lot of airdrops so I have a spam email account for that purpose. Last week; I received an email that I had won some tokens in an airdrop.

The organizer send me an email with a public/private key to an ETH address with ~$5,- in tokens on it (not ETH, different ERC20 tokens). There was no ETH to pay the fee to get it out. I transferred ~0.001 ETH from my own account to cover the transfer fees but a bot immediately transferred the full amount to the next address.

Looking more closely, I actually noticed several other small ETH deposits made that day and immediately getting transferred out.

It isn't the most profitable scam (most people transfer $1-10,-) but it was a new one for me.

NEVER transfer any currency to an address if someone generated the private key. It's tempting to see $5,- in an address when you hold the private key; but you'll just lose whatever you send there to cover transaction fees.

I don't know why someone like you who says "is pretty good at recognizing scams" would first of all access wallet of someone else and then transfer your own ETH to get some random airdrop token..? Once they sent you a private key to get your airdrop tokens, you should have understood. But the good thing is you weren't ripped of a big amount.

Between, it would be wise to do a through malware scan of your PC, in case you directly clicked links from this email. Also consider transferring your funds to some other address and make sure to check the address. There are some bots which can change the copied address in your clipboard.

taking advantage of other people's greedy nature is the oldest trick in the books. it has always been like this. ages ago (and i still sometimes see this) there was a common scam where they called you saying you have won something from our store, like one of those big supermarkets and they told you, you have won a toaster for example. then they asked you that in order to receive the reward you have to make a payment, write a check or something to cover the "costs". then you made the payment and the reward never came!

Thank you for the advice.. I try to pay attention to everything come to my email but sometimes scams are hidden very well

Thatnks for advice but hopefully I'm never transferring anything to somebody, also not giving any personal information or something like that. But I will look carefully, thanks !  ;)

By reading your situation, its very clear that its a scam at the first place. Why would they send their private keys to someone? That would be so dumb. Anyways, its a charged experience for you. Dont get yourself easily lured by a few dollars.

On the surface, scams like this might not look profitable but if you dig deeper you will find out that the accumulation of these small ETH deposits by over a hundred thousand people is a lot of money for the scammer. The $1 to $10 is just a smokescreen!

I've seen this scam run before with Omni tokens.  Same deal, except you have to deposit Bitcoin to sweep the wallet.  I've heard it referred to as a "honey pot" scam.

Useful info. First to hear about that

This is the first time I see a scam like this. But on the other hand this reminds me of the so called "Nigerian Prince" scam, which is similar to this one. You receive an e-mail from someone "belonging to" the Nigerian royal family. They say that they need to transfer a big sum of money and they want to use your bank account. They will give you 10% for that. If you agree, some time later they ask you to cover a fee, like $100, which compared to what you will gain in the end looks insignificant. After transfering that fee you won't hear from them again. :)

Unbelievable how creative scammer are, even if it is only small amounts. Thank you for this information.  :)

I'm one of this who have been scammed by that greed people, But you know the lesson that I learned is never trust those people who are sending you with good words and promise you to get double or triple because I notice that there is no easy money to get. If you want to be rich then you have to strive and work hard.

this good warning for those people airdrop scammer this is day is more agressive and lots of trick just to scam people lets be more suspicious specially from email we got saying we win some token or money.

your luck you only small amount of money.

DUde it's only 1 dollar.... Thanks for posting this anyways I guess someone who is stupid might transfer a larger amount.

Needs to be a complete idiot not to see in such a primitive scheme fraud. What should be done to pay 300% of the Deposit? It's obvious! Greed of people is always an income opportunity for scammers. But don't be upset. The amount you lost is very small. Think about that you bought a very cheap experience.

Where are you getting the bot? Said it looks like you have used the bot that has been sent by a scammer, right? This case is very similar to the trading bot which has been putting a backdoor by the scammer to send victims amounts through API.
Remember 3rd party is untrustable, in my opinion. A scammer has programmed it.

WOW. These scammers are getting smarter day by day. Tbh this is the most intellegent way of scamming I have read about in crypto.
I remember when people used to get scammed at slack channels of ICO's, which then followed with twitter fake profiles trying to scam people for which a lot of people initially fell prey too also, and maybe some still are.

You should NEVER ever give your PRIVATE KEY to anyone especially if you don't know what you're trying to do and in any conditions. Even if they said that they will give you $1M. This is clearly a scam. No one will ever buy PRIVATE KEY from anyone they can create one in several websites. You should protect it like your password. PASSWORD is like PRIVATE KEY and since it is said PRIVATE you should not publicize.

No, my expectation is that it's a bot from the scammer who monitors the blockchain continuously and transfer any funds out directly after they arrived.

I'm aware of scams that try to get your private key. In this case, the scammer actually sends out his/her own private key on purpose. That part was a first for me.

What the hell! Seems that scammers and hackers are always find a way to fool people. I think in every good offer which is not back up by a real person from a established team and before making any move from temptfrom offer make sure that the person contacting you is not an impostor.

In this case we could try to use their weapon against them. If we had some bot-antibot which could transfer all the ETH and ERC20 tokens from the address they send to the victims faster than the scammer's one can, we would tech them a lesson. This way we could give them a lesson and then transfer all their money to some charity fund.
But then again even if someone can make such a bot, where is a guarantee that no one else will use it to scam another. Vicious circle.

Surely a scam,no one would give you a private keys which has a lot of money this is sometime stupid because if someone they have sent could steal their $5 bait for the noob investors,do not join any of these drops because surely it isnt worth the effort isnteald of airdrops why not join bounty campaigns instead? because bounties can give you a decent amount of money.

Thank you for sharing this situation, so that others do not fall into this fraud. Also I am confused by some airdrop, who ask me to transfer them a certain amount in ETH for participation, is not it someone who is doing ???

Firstly, I thank you for bringing this information to the notice of  members of this forum, this is a warning signal to all of us, scammers are devising several strategies or means of stealing people's hard earned token via scrupulous means having been using phished MEW to steal people's private keys on daily basis.

This is an exact replica of the Nigerian Prince Scam. Send me X amount for me to withdraw my money or get it out of a trust. If someone ever asks for an amount to be able to get something in return, its a scam, pure simple.

Although it is new,but its so obvious because not stupid people will give a wallet which has full of money this is another scheme that we should look at,do not use your personal email addresses when you are joining these airdrops because most of these drops will try to send you phishing links and emails so that they can easily get your privatekeys,stay away and be vigillant.

New scams coming out everyday, we really have to be very careful. Thanks for sharing this and lucky your loss is not too big to learn this lesson.

Scams are improving their techniques on a daily basis and new styles are coming in, if one isn't as careful, you might lose high value coins. Thanks for  sharing this, caution should be taken always and protecting our crypto should be a first priority.

You've misunderstood the OP. No one was asking him for his private key. On the contrary they were giving him theirs so he can have access to $5 worth of tokens. But to be able to withdraw the tokens, there should to be some ETH on the account, which they have stolen as soon as he transfered it there. That's a new type of scam everyone should be aware of.