Scammers make victims build the drainers that empty their own wallets

[Pmalek]

I would like to ask one thing that may also be related to this case.

If someone uses an automated trading bot on a testnet network and downloads another person's bot script from github, could that script potentially compromise or drain funds from their personal wallet?
A friend of mine has been experiencing this issue. Every time he funds his wallet again, all of his assets end up being drained. This happens even when he creates and uses a completely new wallet. He got the bot script from a friend who sent it to him via telegram.

It's hard to say. If your friend made the mistake of running an unknown script from an unknown person who promised him that it would help him make money, who knows what other mistakes he did. A script could definitely be the reason why that is happening but so can other things. I am sure some people believe that everything on GitHub is safe. It's not. Your friend should use common sense in the future. He should also reinstall his OS and check the wallets he uses if there are some permissions allowed that shouldn't be there.

[Giwagi56]

Is there any way to avoid this scammers ? Because i don’t understand how they do, they come with different strategies to scam people and they never get tired, they will do any anything to confuse people and steal from them, I have never fall into their traps and i pray i never do, because this people are not ready give up, they always come with different patterns, and they are hunting people that hold big amounts of bitcoins.

There is no way you can escape them, but there is a way you can protect yourself from them, and that is to not be greedy or do what they ask you to do, never reply messages or copy any link or code from them, just remain calm and hold your coin, and remember that there is not way a making quick profit in bitcoin.

[Humblevirus]

It is just better we trust nobody on the Internet, and that is how we can avoid all these scammers to some level. Because no matter how smart a scammer is, it will be very hard for someone to easily detect them with some kind of tactic they bring up to scam people.So, the best thing is to just trust nobody on the Internet. Imagine someone who wants to learn a way to make more money, only to end up losing money to a scammer easily, without the scammer even using their own hands.

But one thing with some people is that, even after what has happened, if they see another offer claiming they will make money, they will follow it and will not care to still click or follow the person steps. But I don't know; maybe some people are not thinking that making this money is not that easy. If it is really as they are claiming, those people who may not even have time to come and teach others the way would definitely be busy making more and more money.For me, anyone I see online claiming to make some kind of amount of money in the crypto market, I hardly believe them because I know that making the kind of money they are claiming is not really easy.

[Patikno]

This case involves a scammer making YouTube tutorials, showing people how to build crypto trading bots with Claude. They provide the viewers with the code they need to use and explain what to do. The scammers explain how to fund the wallet of the "trading bot." The unsuspecting victims deploy a smart contract themselves, on their own computer, and approve transactions without knowing it. While it's true that Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities are much more limited than Ethereum's, a different type of attack could also trick bitcoin holders and make them lose money or infect their systems.

What the victims didn't know is that the "trading bot" isn't a bot at all. It was created to empty your wallet of all ETH and send it to a scammer. It's reported that over 200 wallets were drained in this way and over $500,000 was stolen.

Another important lesson we can learn from this case; is the importance of avoiding downloading files carelessly, especially running code from unknown sources. This is extremely dangerous. Furthermore, you should not easily trust videos on YouTube. You should also be wary of false or misleading information, including fraudulent content. If you encounter such things, immediately report them to the platform, and if possible, share the information with others; to prevent others from becoming victims.

You should also know; that deceptive content can also exist on other platforms besides that.

[Zaka1221]

I stopped trusting people after learning about cryptocurrency, you can't trust anyone online, a small mistake can make us regret our decision, scammers are very good at convincing people, and they can't only just scam you by clicking on any link, there are other methods, instead of learning about bitcoin or how to trade online, it's better to learn it from a forum by asking questions or a person I can see in person and know about, so that if anything happens, I can contact the person.

There is no way to make quick money, even traders are patient with what they do. We should not allow anyone to convince you that they can teach you how to make money and gain access to your wallet, instead, learn from people you know and see, while there are some people who can teach you with a good heart, but do not trust anyone online who claims to teach you how to make money.

Trusting strangers specially online always bring biggest regret because its give some peoples lesson but its never been easy to recover from this trauma one of my friend faced serious problems because he trust one person and he wiped out his all funds and then out of scene its give him huge lost and end of his sweet journey in good life sometime when I watched really feel upset because having this lost surely big lesson never trust at any cost.

Mostly online scams happen due to trust or lack of knowledge of the victim because he never knows what is going to happen to him, and he gives his sensitive information to an unknown person who is having just one cause to give him a loss and have all his information in his own control, while exchanging or having any business using an escrow or trustworthy platform is a must; without this, never do anything if you want to stay on good terms.

[Rengga Jati]

Is there any way to avoid this scammers ? Because i don’t understand how they do, they come with different strategies to scam people and they never get tired, they will do any anything to confuse people and steal from them, I have never fall into their traps and i pray i never do, because this people are not ready give up, they always come with different patterns, and they are hunting people that hold big amounts of bitcoins.

I am certain there are countless scammers in the world. They may operate as organized teams or as individuals. Often possessing advanced technical skills and sophisticated technology to ensure their scams run smoothly.

We cannot stop them. But, we can protect ourselves or at least try to. Regarding this post, the OP has clearly provided a valuable lesson:

The lesson here is: don't copy and run unknown code. Don't open unknown files. Don't trust people you don't know who want to help you get rich. They might be looking for a way to get rich off of you. Keep both eyes open at all times.

We already received a great deal of information and shared experiences on this forum concerning other types of scams. You can find plenty of details in the relevant boards:
Scam Accusations
More about scam

Various personal scams can also originate from private messages sent directly to you. Therefore, never trust anyone blindly. Never click on links from strangers. Verify the link's authenticity before clicking. Do not trust anyone offering large sums of money with strange conditions. Of course, be wary of anyone contacting you via DM with promises of making money too easily.

[PERtua]

I stopped trusting people after learning about cryptocurrency, you can't trust anyone online, a small mistake can make us regret our decision, scammers are very good at convincing people, and they can't only just scam you by clicking on any link, there are other methods, instead of learning about bitcoin or how to trade online, it's better to learn it from a forum by asking questions or a person I can see in person and know about, so that if anything happens, I can contact the person.

There is no way to make quick money, even traders are patient with what they do. We should not allow anyone to convince you that they can teach you how to make money and gain access to your wallet, instead, learn from people you know and see, while there are some people who can teach you with a good heart, but do not trust anyone online who claims to teach you how to make money.

Trusting strangers specially online always bring biggest regret because its give some peoples lesson but its never been easy to recover from this trauma one of my friend faced serious problems because he trust one person and he wiped out his all funds and then out of scene its give him huge lost and end of his sweet journey in good life sometime when I watched really feel upset because having this lost surely big lesson never trust at any cost.

Mostly online scams happen due to trust or lack of knowledge of the victim because he never knows what is going to happen to him, and he gives his sensitive information to an unknown person who is having just one cause to give him a loss and have all his information in his own control, while exchanging or having any business using an escrow or trustworthy platform is a must; without this, never do anything if you want to stay on good terms.

I don't believe the focus should be on the online vs in-person. You can receive unsafe code from someone you know personally, and a stranger online can offer you something that is safe. What's more helpful is to distinguish trust from giving access to funds: check what a program or contract does, test with another wallet, and, don't give an unknown app access to funds that you are not willing to lose. When it comes to crypto, it makes more sense to minimize the amount of trust that needs to be placed than to try to determine who is trustworthy.

[X-ray]

Is there any way to avoid this scammers ? Because i don’t understand how they do, they come with different strategies to scam people and they never get tired, they will do any anything to confuse people and steal from them, I have never fall into their traps and i pray i never do, because this people are not ready give up, they always come with different patterns, and they are hunting people that hold big amounts of bitcoins.

To avoid them is simple actually, never give up your seed phrase, there is nobody in this world that should know your seed phrase except you even in the most dire situation because the sole reason somebody else want to know your seed phrase is because they want control over your crypto and never interact with unverified sources.

I got so many emails, never opened them except emails I whitelisted, never fallen into scam ever since. Use that custom filter feature, it's very helpful to filter 90% of the spam and phishing you got that not even automated filtering can stop.

With how rampant scams are and how common social engineering through many methods, simply consider almost anything to be scam or phishing attempt. Nothing wrong with being a little bit more careful.

[Pmalek]

I've always been aware of my own security and really don't trust random people, not even trust your friends who suddenly share an unknown link or program or other investment invitation.

Good point. The person who tells you about it or sends you something like that doesn't necessarily need to have bad intentions towards you. As you said, it can come from a friend, and they might think they are doing the right thing and helping you. In reality, they might be creating major difficulties both for themselves and the people they have shared the scheme with.

how can you sign a smart contract without looking at what you’re doing? they deployed it on their own computers.

Because their mind isn't in the right place. They aren't thinking straight. Their sole focus is on the profit they believe they will be making. Whatever popups and warnings they see, they believe they are just necessary steps and confirmations to start earning that money.

[moneystery]

Right now, if someone isn't careful about what they download or do on the internet, they are very likely to become victims of hacking or scams. Because hackers are constantly finding new ways to trick people. That's why if people don't understand what they're doing, they will most likely become victims.
Therefore, people need to be more careful about anything they come across on the internet. These days, there's no such thing as a free lunch; even if a tutorial is free, you still need to always verify it. Ideally, if they use Claude, they could verify the code they put in there, but maybe they're just too lazy and want everything fast, so they just run whatever they're told without considering whether it's dangerous or not.

[Danish Ali]

Because their mind isn't in the right place. They aren't thinking straight. Their sole focus is on the profit they believe they will be making. Whatever popups and warnings they see, they believe they are just necessary steps and confirmations to start earning that money.

That's actually a great point. It helps answer "why would they ignore a blind-signing warning". It's not technical. It's behavioural/psychological. They are expecting to be able to make a profit off of it. They're being lead to ignore warnings by the nature of the tutorial and the way they describe the process.

So when a warning does come up it's just another thing to ignore, click next and move on with the process. Also, you're right, it helps that they call it a "trading bot" and not just some random software. That primes people into thinking of profits before they're asked to import the wallet.

[Lucius]

Is there any way to avoid this scammers ?
~snip~

There is one very simple way - be exposed to social networks as little as possible, because it is a tool that scammers primarily use to reach their victims. I stopped wasting time reading and looking at posts on social networks a long time ago because, apart from the fact that at least 80% of the content is total nonsense, a person wastes a lot of time sitting in front of a screen, and this evidently affects the mental and physical health of every person.

Apart from phishing emails that mostly go to spam folders, I personally have no contact with scammers because they can't even try to contact me in any other way.

[Pmalek]

When it comes to crypto, it makes more sense to minimize the amount of trust that needs to be placed than to try to determine who is trustworthy.

Compartmentalization is a great way to avoid such problems. Use one computer for your crypto and/or financials and don't use it for anything else. No gaming, no streaming, no everyday internet surfing, no work, and especially activities such as torrents, porn, cracked software, etc. Do that somewhere else and compartmentalize further if needed. A computer doesn't get infected by itself. The user does something to it. The malware or infection is the result of the user's activities. 

With how rampant scams are and how common social engineering through many methods, simply consider almost anything to be scam or phishing attempt. Nothing wrong with being a little bit more careful.

There is such a thing as a healthy level of paranoia. If you can keep your paranoia at that healthy level, you will be safe.

[taufik123]

Because their mind isn't in the right place. They aren't thinking straight. Their sole focus is on the profit they believe they will be making. Whatever popups and warnings they see, they believe they are just necessary steps and confirmations to start earning that money.

I had a similar experience, when a friend you have known for a long time in crypto shared some advice on buying a memecoin or a project that was the best project, but it turned out to be a trap project.
Worse still he didn't feel guilty and said that I was too stupid to follow his instincts.

And some other cases are also related to the accounts of people I know but those accounts were hacked and sent phishing links and some weird apps that I didn't know.
It makes me more vigilant at the moment, not wanting to trust anyone about money and investments.