Crypto scammers impersonate Binance exec for $210k haul

Binance co-founder Yi He has warned the crypto community against scammers impersonating his account and launching phishing campaigns.

According to He’s announcement on Friday, crypto scammers successfully obtained 60 Ether (ETH). The victim apparently clicked on a malicious link, believing that the Binance administrator was promoting the digital asset giveaway.

“Please be careful of such fake accounts,” he advised blockchain participants and community members. Scammers enjoy using famous personalities, companies, and other public figures for malicious purposes.

Malicious individuals have previously hacked social media pages operated by companies such as CoinGecko, Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin and MicroStrategy. Scammers also reportedly used AI-generated deepfakes to host a widely viewed phishing trap on YouTube earlier this month.

Crypto airdrops are under siege

The problem is especially prevalent on social network X. Scammers often spoof web3 protocols pages during airdrops to trick unwitting users into stealing money.

According to Blockaid, the number of malicious platforms imitating Ethereum scaling solution zkSync has increased fivefold since the project announced its token distribution plan. Blockaid CEO and co-founder Ido Ben-Natan also told crypto.news that scammers are likely using X ads to target all zero-knowledge (ZK) accounts during this period.

This model is a growing trend in the emerging blockchain industry; Bad actors are trying to increase the excitement around these airdrops to steal digital assets. Similar events were noticed when Starknet and EigenLayer announced their respective airdrops.

⚠️Are you excited? @zksync‘S $ZK By plane? So are the scammers!

Blockaid observed a massive increase in malicious dApps imitating the ZkSync compliance checker, with a 5x increase on the day the checker was released. pic.twitter.com/tmW1xPHed0

— Blockaid (@blockaid_) June 13, 2024