Have you seen a Bitcoin scam that specifically used Lightning Network for paymen

[sgtpeanutbutter]

I'm a grad student researching whether social scams (giveaway scams, "double your BTC," fake investment schemes, recovery scams, romance-scam pivots to crypto, phishing) are using Lightning Network specifically as the payment method, rather than just regular on-chain Bitcoin addresses. I've confirmed Lightning is genuinely widely used across several platforms, but found only two confirmed cases of scams so far, both on P2P Lightning trading platforms : a bot impersonation scam on lnp2pBot (fake invoice mimicking the real bot's messages, independently corroborated by multiple other victims on Stacker News) and a similar attempt on RoboSats exploiting its collaborative-cancel feature. Has anyone else encountered something similar? A reply with what platform it was on and what the pitch looked like would help. No need to share anything identifying (this is for a thesis feasibility study).

[BlackHatCoiner]

Most social scammers avoid Lightning because managing inbound liquidity, channel capacity, and expiring invoices adds too much friction compared to a single on-chain address.

It's almost entirely low-value micro-theft rather than large-scale one.

[Findingnemo]

Most social scammers avoid Lightning because managing inbound liquidity, channel capacity, and expiring invoices adds too much friction compared to a single on-chain address.

It's almost entirely low-value micro-theft rather than large-scale one.

Social engineering scams require the victim to make swift actions so they just focus on anything faster without giving enough time to see the reality that might be the reason, so if the scammer take time to create the channel opening process, then all others to complete the scam successfully might have less success than just sent from address A to X in no time.

[PrivacyG]

There is about no incentive to do this through the Lightning Network when there is SO much Bitcoin to steal from silly people who hold it on chain.  People who are advanced enough to use and understand Lightning Network would not fall for their scams.  Think of it like Mac OS.  It was known as 'the impossible to infect' Operating System for a LONG time.  Now that a ton of people own one however, things have changed and it is pretty easy to get malware on it too, because there is now a 'treasure' to look after with many possible locations to try.

[Rashlyowl]

Unfortunately, I have never seen a case of a scam or anything similar involving the lightning network. From what I’ve seen, BTC scams generally occur directly on-chain, I haven't heard of them happening via scaling solutions like the lightning network.

By the way, good luck with your research, bros @sgtpeanutbutter.

[BitMaxz]

a similar attempt on RoboSats exploiting its collaborative-cancel feature. Has anyone else encountered something similar?

I don't know if I've heard this before but I never heard any exploit happening using Robosats even I do research to any SERP; it's a P2P exchange with no KYC but mainly uses Lightning because it has an advantage when it comes to instant sending.

I don't know if scammers have way to scam people using this platform since it's peer-to-peer encrypted with escrow. How can scammers attempt to scam someone using RoboSats? Unless this exploit you mean is actually exists, even escrow can't avoid this, then how will people trust RoBoSats?
For now, honestly, it's impossible; I've never heard that exploit.

[Chibit01]

Social engineering scams require the victim to make swift actions so they just focus on anything faster without giving enough time to see the reality that might be the reason, so if the scammer take time to create the channel opening process, then all others to complete the scam successfully might have less success than just sent from address A to X in no time.

Another thing too, aside from convincing their victims about how to create channels is a long process, most of these scammers don't really know much about bitcoin and how it works, so it will even be hard for them to go through this process. I said this because of the average knowledge of a scammer who once contacted me by telegram that doesn't even simply know how the bitcoin fee is being calculated but was boldly trying to convince me about how I could make money from bitcoin mining linked to his firm.

[X-ray]

Aside from inconvenience that have been outlined, scam activities are usually one off activity where victim was told to send all at once and that's it.

Using lightning network for these scammers would make things complicated and it's not like they're paying for the fees.

And lastly, I think the main reason they don't really use lightning network is because most of their victim aren't really familiar with it nor uses lightning capable wallet.

As simple as, most of the victims are gullible people who don't really know what is Lightning.

Considering that Crypto ATM has been major channel for such scams and only minority of ATM supports Lightning.

[Antidote47k]

a similar attempt on RoboSats exploiting its collaborative-cancel feature. Has anyone else encountered something similar?

I don't know if I've heard this before but I never heard any exploit happening using Robosats even I do research to any SERP; it's a P2P exchange with no KYC but mainly uses Lightning because it has an advantage when it comes to instant sending.

I don't know if scammers have way to scam people using this platform since it's peer-to-peer encrypted with escrow. How can scammers attempt to scam someone using RoboSats? Unless this exploit you mean is actually exists, even escrow can't avoid this, then how will people trust RoBoSats?
For now, honestly, it's impossible; I've never heard that exploit.

One might not necessarily be required to break the escrow itself to carry out a scam involving RoboSats, an escrow protects the trade while the social engineering part happens around it. If the attacker is able to convince the victim to perform some actions that can change or cancel the trade then, the weakness may be in how the protocol features are being manipulated rather than the cryptography or escrow mechanism itself.
Which is why I find OPs mentioning of the collaborative cancel feature interesting. I would also like to know what the actual attack was like and what response the victim was led to believe he or she should perform.
 
If throughout the attack, the escrow itself remained secure then it would be misleading to call it an escrow exploit, more accurately would be a social engineering attack abusing a legitimate protocol feature.

[ABCbits]

Depending on what you count as scam, how about attempt to release earlier state of LN channel after someone make a payment? I can't find it easily with Google search, but i definitely remember there are few discussion and news that report such cheating attempt in mainnet in past.

[Doan9269]

More people are using the unchain transactions and that is where the common scams at the game place, let's admit it that experienced businesses and enterprises are those that engage to use the lightning network, this makes it very difficult for them to be evicting of scam because they know what they are doing and and provided that enlarge number of businesses of the lightning network, what is gaining traction is the onchain transactions, which will make their high chances of getting victims possible than the rare use of lightning network that may render their efforts fruitless.

[Danish Ali]

In addition to the P2P bot invoice faking, be sure to check out the Lightning Address phishing and LNURL-pay invoice phishing on Nostr / social networks.
Fake LN Addresses and QR codes are made with a similar name (e.g. devi_20 or devi_abolfazl by adding 10 or 20 characters to the name of a famous dev or Influencer) or fake giveaway posts with bad QR codes which include a LNURL. Victims will pay immediately, without the need to check the receiver node ID / memo, since LNURL / Nostr Zaps will create a BOLT11 invoice on the fly for the victim to pay.

[tbct_mt2]

I'm a grad student researching whether social scams (giveaway scams, "double your BTC," fake investment schemes, recovery scams, romance-scam pivots to crypto, phishing) are using Lightning Network specifically as the payment method, rather than just regular on-chain Bitcoin addresses. I've confirmed Lightning is genuinely widely used across several platforms, but found only two confirmed cases of scams so far, both on P2P Lightning trading platforms

There are many scam methods used by scammers, on Bitcoin blockchain and Bitcoin Lightning Network. There are ways to scam, scammers will not hesitate to do that because scamming victims is their favorite and most familiar jobs.

Cryptocurrency scambook https://www.chainsec.io/scams
Bitcoin scam reports https://chainabuse.com/chain/BTC

Scams with P2P are very common because if a person is newbie and lack of experience in P2P trading, scammer can create pressure during the trade and scam successfully quite easy.

[ObeyKnock]

In addition to the P2P bot invoice faking, be sure to check out the Lightning Address phishing and LNURL-pay invoice phishing on Nostr / social networks.
Fake LN Addresses and QR codes are made with a similar name (e.g. devi_20 or devi_abolfazl by adding 10 or 20 characters to the name of a famous dev or Influencer) or fake giveaway posts with bad QR codes which include a LNURL. Victims will pay immediately, without the need to check the receiver node ID / memo, since LNURL / Nostr Zaps will create a BOLT11 invoice on the fly for the victim to pay.

Even a Bitcoin address still has a test number that almost always provide an opportunity to snag a swap, a Lightning Address or LNURL-pay is completely opaque to the sender, who receives whatever the endpoint passes back to the wallet, and the endpoint never reveals a node id to the sender for comparison. Particularly when used in conjunction with the lookalike-name trick (which plays an important role here).
Additional side added to the argument, fake "activation fee" scam disguised as a real LN faucet/LN feelings and have a QR code LNURL-withdraw.

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

Onchain transaction is everywhere and dominated the market than lightning network, even the most active users of Bitcoin isn't easy with LN because of its complicated procedures for receiving Bitcoin. Scammers are always in a hurry when accepting deposit, so LN wouldn't give them what they want because it slows down their targets.

Onchain doesn't stress that much, it is self explanatory and easy going to complete a transaction unlike LN.