Tax refund scheme scams on the rise using "Gas fee refunds"

[Cookdata]

Recently, I've observed that there are some advertisements on X that I do see, but I didn't pay attention to them the first time. Afterwards, I click on one because of the name, and sure enough, the ad is about a "tax refund."

What's a tax refund? It's a fair reimbursement to taxpayers for extra funds they have paid to the federal or state governments. Scammers are now masking their acts under the same idea, claiming that the Eth2.0 arrival signifies that the Ethereum Foundation is returning fees to Ethereum users who have paid excess fees while interacting with the chain.

Just for people that must have read somewhere about tax refunds, it's true for US citizens but there is nothing like a gas fee refund, foundations will not return any fees to you because you weren't paying the fees to the foundation, you were paying to the validators or Miners (before Ethereum upgraded to proof of stake) to validate and confirm your transactions.

As one of the EVMs that consumes fees the most, the Ethereum chain has been the focus of this trend, which is still relatively new, but I'm sure other EVMs will follow shortly. Among the websites I have found are these and are most likely to drain your wallet when you connect and try to claim the fee:

Code:

https://refund.gaseth.xyz/
https://get.etherzgas.xyz/
https://home.etherzgas.xyz/
https://refund.etherty.xyz/
https://new.etherty.xyz/
https://view.gaszeth.xyz/
https://view.getzeth.xyz/

Scammers target places that are friendly to crypto and X is one of the places but I don't know why they accept any form of adverts on their platform and wouldn't do any investigation about the ads, please be cautious of other platforms you visit.

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[Outhue]

Thanks for doing this and I hope it gets to many people as soon as possible, although not everyone on the forum will care about this and it also can't get to all the newbies in crypto spaace but atleast it will safe the little that it can, hopefully, beginners on this forum will come across this thread.

There is nothing on the block chain that will reward for all the gas fees you've spent since you started buying Ethereum, if you come across any, it's likely to be a scam, only greedy people who feel like making money can be free will become a victim to such similar scams online.

Be very careful of Twitter and Telegram, scammers and many impersonators are on these social apps, do not believe anything you see online, especially when they are trying to give out free tokens or compensation for anything.

If you don't work for it why try to claim it? Don't let your greed get the best of you.

[goldkingcoiner]

I have been seeing this gas fee refund scam a lot, too. I wonder where it came from so suddenly...

[BlackBoss_]

There is no refund for what people spent in the past, long time in the past.

If there is refund or discount, it is announced on a DEX and user will get it immediately like Zksync and some bridges.

Back to long to the past and say refund, it is impossible. Developers of any protocol, platform don't have deep budget to refund like this. If people are not greed, they will smell the scam and see the hidden fact.

[examplens]

Recently, I've observed that there are some advertisements on X that I do see, but I didn't pay attention to them the first time. Afterwards, I click on one because of the name, and sure enough, the ad is about a "tax refund."

In the last few days, I noticed a lot of ads with this offer, scammers have spent a lot of money to make this visible. Unfortunately, Twitter or "X" with a new owner has become completely blind to recognize and reject this type of (obvious scam) advertising. I don't even know how many accounts I blocked or muted, but they still appear.

Code:

https://refund.gaseth.xyz/
https://get.etherzgas.xyz/
https://home.etherzgas.xyz/
https://refund.etherty.xyz/
https://new.etherty.xyz/
https://view.gaszeth.xyz/
https://view.getzeth.xyz/

Have you noticed that all the sites on the list are offline or unavailable? Only Cloudflare response and nothing more.

[Iroh]

I’ve also come across this particular ad on the social media app formerly called Twitter. Apparently, it aims to lure people with the false prospect of getting an accumulated refund of your gas fees spent over time. I’ve ignored it like I do most ads that appear on my feed.
It’s crazy thinking you’ll get a refund of fees paid for your transactions but sadly, there may be people that would buy into this nonsense. I’m quite certain people who haven’t made a single transaction would also like to get a refund and may also be eligible(after paying a certain amount of course).

Perhaps X is willing to accept just any project that is willing to spend money on their platform for advertisement purposes without verifying its authenticity in its quest to generate revenue.

[Faisal2202]

Thanks for bringing this topic to our attention, although I don't follow any types of schemes shared on Twitter. Before the buying option of blue tick things were a little more clear than they are now. Because now any scammer can buy a blue tick while before, we could judge one's profile as of scammer or not. But now every scammer has a blue tick. Well, Golden Tick is the best option but getting that is not an easy task even for legit ones so one person can confuse either from the both with each other.

Newbies are the ones who feel to such fishing schemes most, those who have been into crypto for some time they do know how scammers try to convince you to buy their scheme. But sometimes these scammers are too smart that they even scam experienced ones too. That's why I avoid any types of schemes, only follow the ones that are legit or the ones with a golden tick.

[Cookdata]

In the last few days, I noticed a lot of ads with this offer, scammers have spent a lot of money to make this visible. Unfortunately, Twitter or "X" with a new owner has become completely blind to recognize and reject this type of (obvious scam) advertising. I don't even know how many accounts I blocked or muted, but they still appear.

What I have noticed is that because ads are personalized based on a person activity, when an certain ad reach to a user and they noticed there is a click which means you visited, there will be likely possibility of another different ads but similar in your feed or in the comments section. This why you see them keep popping up even as you report the scams ads, sometimes I wonder if they even check when ads are reported.

Have you noticed that all the sites on the list are offline or unavailable? Only Cloudflare response and nothing more.

When I was piling up these links, I didn't report them so that I can get more other accounts that are used for adverts and I was able to gather these ones in just 2 days and after that, I start to report the links but now I the links don't open but even with the reports and "not interested in this ads", they keep coming but the links are not active with verified accounts for that matter. More like a coordinated attack with many verified accounts probably done with bots by the same person.

[Sandra_hakeem]

As one of the EVMs that consumes fees the most, the Ethereum chain has been the focus of this trend, which is still relatively new, but I'm sure other EVMs will follow shortly. Among the websites I have found are these and are most likely to drain your wallet when you connect and try to claim the fee:

So many scammy projects have been sent out in the wild, to --grip in their cold claws -- the inexperienced rookies in crypto.. It becomes even more fascinating to discover new ways to which these cyber criminals would wanna maneuver, even before it catches more gullible people.

Scammers target places that are friendly to crypto and X is one of the places[...]

X has been messed up with alot of shitty stuffs and that keeps me wondering if the admins aren't doing their jobs?... Y'all be careful!

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

I have heard about this tax refund and how US citizens have been benefiting from it. I read about it in a scam report post where some people used someone else's identity who knew nothing about the tax refund or how to file it, and they somehow managed to get all the information they needed from them and get it filed and move out the money without their knowledge. 
 
This pattern that these scammers bring to the Ethereum community will only be possible if the people they target know nothing about how the Ethereum transaction fee, which is called the gas fee, works. Anyone who understands how the blockchain system operates and how the gas is being distributed will know that this is nothing but a scam, and this tax refund is only for US citizens and their citizens who have been paying tax in the past. So how will they link this to the Ethereum blockchain? 
 
From the view they get from promoting that scam advert, I'm sure some newbie crypto investors might have fallen into their scam before the post is brought down, as Twitter is the perfect place for these scammers to take their scam to, and they get fast victims from there.

[jossiel]

This scam never gets old about fees. While many of these scam projects are making it look like they're decent and won't ask for that much but with these gas fees that are automatically deducted through smart contracts whenever a fooled participant think that it's fine to spend that money with gas fees.

But they don't know that if they're going to combine all of their victims gas fees, it sums a lot.

Now, with this trick about gas fee refunds, many will still get fooled by this but if everyone is going to remember about not clicking of unknown links, you'd be safe.

Also, basic knowledge for most of the users. Gas fees can't be refunded.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

In the last few days, I noticed a lot of ads with this offer, scammers have spent a lot of money to make this visible. Unfortunately, Twitter or "X" with a new owner has become completely blind to recognize and reject this type of (obvious scam) advertising. I don't even know how many accounts I blocked or muted, but they still appear.

Code:

https://refund.gaseth.xyz/
https://get.etherzgas.xyz/
https://home.etherzgas.xyz/
https://refund.etherty.xyz/
https://new.etherty.xyz/
https://view.gaszeth.xyz/
https://view.getzeth.xyz/

Have you noticed that all the sites on the list are offline or unavailable? Only Cloudflare response and nothing more.

It's unfortunate that twitter has now become a safe haven for scam and phishing site, even way more than Facebook used to be. Trying to monetize twitter was the worst thing that ever happened to that platform.

I have also been seeing so many of those scam site lately

I checked out the links and all of them are online as of today except the last one.

[xLays]

If you're Crypto X'guy probably you will see this kind of tweets or X ads because of X algorithm. My advice about this is just avoid clicking on any links provided in unsolicited messages or tweet, this is a simple yet effective way to be safe of Twitter crypto airdrop or like this "Gas free refund" scams. Also never send any cryptocurrency to anyone promising giveaway or airdrop especially if it requires you to send cryptocurrency first.

[hugeblack]

I expected the idea to be to refund the tax fees you pay, but the gas fees? It costs an average of $1-10, and if you do not want to pay it, you should try second-layer solutions such as polygon. As for the idea that transaction fees are paid to you, it is a scam, and whoever believes it does not know much about cryptocurrencies.

[tabas]

Look how not secured X platform is. Related to this tax refund scam scheme, there is this tweet that I've found from a guy that has a verified check badge and then upon checking, he's only got a few followers. And the tweet is about one of the links which is on the code below.

Code:

https://refund.gaseth.xyz/

PS: Zoom in/out the image for better visibility.

Code:

https://twitter.com/pablotres6215/status/1768883378697257055

That's the link of the tweet and instead of quoting and linking it to the image, I've used the "code" code. And as you can see, that tweet has already garnered 554.1k views which gives me the idea that there probably have fallen for it already.  

[albon]

The ridiculous fraud scheme that scammers are now using to deceive newcomers in the crypto field into believing they can get a refund for the fees they've paid on the Ethereum network has become extremely annoying. I am really upset and astonished, just like this user on X, whose tweet about this issue I've included as a screenshot, due to the numerous repetitive scam ads and tweets being widely promoted, including thousands of phishing sites to scam people.



Those who know the basics of cryptocurrencies and the mechanism of transactions on the networks and that there is no way to refund transaction fees on Ethereum will understand that there is a vast difference between this and a Tax Refund and that this is one of the failed schemes.

[Cookdata]

That's the link of the tweet and instead of quoting and linking it to the image, I've used the "code" code. And as you can see, that tweet has already garnered 554.1k views which gives me the idea that there probably have fallen for it already.  

I got to a point and was tired and then I decide not report again because it seems the algorithm kind of find me easy as a target. The number of accounts with many fake ads I have seen from last week to this week is alarming, the number of Ethereum gas funds ads are so much that I think the scams is really fetching them victims and they are making money. I have seen more different domain entirely different from the ones I have reported and Elon is busy accepting their revenue ads without any investigation.

A real company should put users protection as priority, seeing increased in this ads request by some people, they ought to have check why the demand is really coming but they don't do all this check up and they claim they have the best engineers, very bad job from X company to combat scammers.