Someone sent me a Nemo wallet with 2.1 BTC in it. It shows a screenshot of keys

[MoneyBomber]

But the mnemonic phrase doesn't work
It shows 2 QR codes. one of the BTC address, the other of the old style 18 word mnemonic  phrase. I tried  the phrase in multiple wallets and tools online but it doesn't work. All the words belong tot he BIP 39 word list too. One of the words is duplicated, I wonder if that may be an issue.

Thought I had a lucky break from a stranger. I guess not

Last transactions from wallet were from 2014
1AtGJ2e4Mw3v5AjGGWTvQDFVsxRbB2fxPf

[1715057134]

1715057134

[1715057134]

1715057134

[1715057134]

1715057134

[1715057134]

1715057134

[1715057134]

1715057134

[jackg]

How did you come across this wallet and is it actually yours? You make it sound a lot like isn't...

[MoneyBomber]

How did you come across this wallet and is it actually yours? You make it sound a lot like isn't...

It's not mine. I just got some sketchy message on telegram. They sent a bunch of seed phrases. Some with tokens still in them, but that had no liquidity on pancake swap. I've seen withdraws on those wallets within the last 12 hours.

I'm pretty sure the BTC funds are inaccessible.


What's the advantage of a criminal sending me their seed phrase ?

[Edwardard]

What's the advantage of a criminal sending me their seed phrase ?

Its a reverse scam technique. They first give you the private keys with some (fake) tokens in it but they require some gas fee to be transferred into your wallet,  right? The moment you send few bnb or trx into that wallet for gas fee, they auto send it to the scammers' address (via a smart contract arranged).
If anyone shows you a btc balance and gives their keys especially on bsc/erc-20/trc-20 chains, its most likely a scam, dont get tricked.
PS: If they give you a seed in the form of recovery file, it most likely contains malware/trojan, delete them immediately!

[MoneyBomber]

What's the advantage of a criminal sending me their seed phrase ?

Its a reverse scam technique. They first give you the private keys with some (fake) tokens in it but they require some gas fee to be transferred into your wallet,  right? The moment you send few bnb or trx into that wallet for gas fee, they auto send it to the scammers' address (via a smart contract arranged).
If anyone shows you a btc balance and gives their keys especially on bsc/erc-20/trc-20 chains, its most likely a scam, dont get tricked.
PS: If they give you a seed in the form of recovery file, it most likely contains malware/trojan, delete them immediately!

So yes, I definitely see that's the case with the EVM chains.

I think the picture of the nemo wallet was faked. Dag

[jackg]

How did you come across this wallet and is it actually yours? You make it sound a lot like isn't...

It's not mine. I just got some sketchy message on telegram. They sent a bunch of seed phrases. Some with tokens still in them, but that had no liquidity on pancake swap. I've seen withdraws on those wallets within the last 12 hours.

I'm pretty sure the BTC funds are inaccessible.


What's the advantage of a criminal sending me their seed phrase ?

Sometimes they get you to click links. Sometimes they'll take funds in a scammy way as mentioned above. Sometimes they'll hope you save the wallet somewhere and forget to tell the difference between that and your original one. Sometimes they'll just want to check your account is reading messages and is still active (such as to sell your username on as an account that's active/reads messages).

There's probably more reasons but it's worth just checking your notification bar and swiping off messages.

[Osama Maaz]

There king of scams are happening on daily basic specifically with telegram users some time ago some coins come to my wallet on BSC network and when i check these price these are 3000$ worth of tokens on pancake-swap ,

So first i know that its a scam but i just try to swap these tokens to bnb but it gives a fee worth of 2.5 dollars but in greed i confirm the network fee and after a step its shows a network error but my 2.5$ cuts ,
So my mistake is every time the transaction fee on bnb chain is usually under 0.5$ but its shows 2.5$ fee which is a clue that this is a trick of any scammer ,

So in crypto you are the owner of your own funds and if you mistake send and confirm and transaction then there is no chance that you will get any of coin back. Before sending crypto to anyone check address three times before send any king of payment .

[Sayeds56]

There king of scams are happening on daily basic specifically with telegram users some time ago some coins come to my wallet on BSC network and when i check these price these are 3000$ worth of tokens on pancake-swap ,

So first i know that its a scam but i just try to swap these tokens to bnb but it gives a fee worth of 2.5 dollars but in greed i confirm the network fee and after a step its shows a network error but my 2.5$ cuts ,
So my mistake is every time the transaction fee on bnb chain is usually under 0.5$ but its shows 2.5$ fee which is a clue that this is a trick of any scammer ,

So in crypto you are the owner of your own funds and if you mistake send and confirm and transaction then there is no chance that you will get any of coin back. Before sending crypto to anyone check address three times before send any king of payment .

Always confirm contract address of coin/token before you add them in your wallet & never add such fake/scam coins in your wallet, there is possibility that scammers will steal your funds when you try to sell such scam coins. There are thousands of fake currencies circulating in crypto space with similar name to legitimate coins name like Dogecoin and many others. I always check/confirm contract address on https://coinmarketcap.com/ before I decide to buy or add coin in my wallet.

[virasog]

PS: If they give you a seed in the form of recovery file, it most likely contains malware/trojan, delete them immediately!

I think deleting only won't eliminate the risk completely, better he should reimage his system. If he only deletes the file, which he already opened, the malware might be residing on his hard disk. A hard disk format is the best precaution in this case.

Always confirm contract address of coin/token before you add them in your wallet & never add such fake/scam coins in your wallet, there is possibility that scammers will steal your funds when you try to sell such scam coins. There are thousands of fake currencies circulating in crypto space with similar name to legitimate coins name like Dogecoin and many others. I always check/confirm contract address on https://coinmarketcap.com/ before I decide to buy or add coin in my wallet.

We usually connect our wallets to sites in order to get airdrops too. So, in that case, create a new wallet and then claim the airdrop. We should not connect our main wallet to random sites. This is another precaution which should be taken care of, if we want to be safe.

[WatChe]

Its a reverse scam technique. They first give you the private keys with some (fake) tokens in it but they require some gas fee to be transferred into your wallet,  right? The moment you send few bnb or trx into that wallet for gas fee, they auto send it to the scammers' address (via a smart contract arranged).
If anyone shows you a btc balance and gives their keys especially on bsc/erc-20/trc-20 chains, its most likely a scam, dont get tricked.
PS: If they give you a seed in the form of recovery file, it most likely contains malware/trojan, delete them immediately!

Seems like its very similar to Macro viruses isn't it? Micro virus embed themselves in word-processing documents (like MS word) that are mostly attached with an email. When the victim clicks the file, the micro virus code is executed.
The basic idea behind every modern virus/malware is to trick the victim to do a very simple mistake that results in execution of the virus program (in this case its execution of smart contract when victim send token in wallet).
By just reading such replies one can surely save himself from scams. Your reply is worth sharing.

[Lucius]

It's not mine. I just got some sketchy message on telegram. They sent a bunch of seed phrases. Some with tokens still in them, but that had no liquidity on pancake swap. I've seen withdraws on those wallets within the last 12 hours.

Do not communicate with unknown people through social networks, and absolutely do not trust anything even if you receive such messages. If you want to do others a favor, report such users to the Telegram abuse service and maybe their account will be blocked.

[virasog]

It's not mine. I just got some sketchy message on telegram. They sent a bunch of seed phrases. Some with tokens still in them, but that had no liquidity on pancake swap. I've seen withdraws on those wallets within the last 12 hours.

Do not communicate with unknown people through social networks, and absolutely do not trust anything even if you receive such messages. If you want to do others a favor, report such users to the Telegram abuse service and maybe their account will be blocked.

I guess no one wants to respond to unknown message from telegram or any social networks but these people come up with so lucrative offers which is hard to resist. Everyone wants money and almost every other person is greedy, so these scammers are able to scam people.

Even if they hit 100 people, minimum 10 people will fall for their scam because of either greediness or ignorance. Scammers are getting intelligent with every passing day and they come up new ideas to scam the people involved in cryptocurrencies.

[Lucius]

@virasog, Scammers count on people's naivety and greed, but this is something that must change in people's minds so that each of us who are aware of it will warn others, whether it is about this forum or the people who surround us every day. It will never happen that everyone will be aware that you should not look for money online with help from complete strangers, but if only one out of 100 people fell into the trap, maybe the scammers would become discouraged and start giving up their dirty work.