Bad actors are drawn to the blockchain space because of its anonymous nature; This individual seeks to scam and steal funds from investors. This time, a group of fraudsters is targeting investors from the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. To target these potential victims, scammers offer the return of lost funds.
On Friday, the exchange issued an alert to prevent the community from falling victim to this scam. A new attack vector to bait FTX customer impersonates the platform. Bad actors demand payment as a fee to allegedly transfer funds or require account passwords to deceive their victims.
Addressing the community in a recent tweet, the FTX team confirmed that debaters and exchange agents never ask for fees or sensitive account information. At tweet read:
We are aware of active third-party scams and scams that seek to take advantage of FTX customers. Please note that FTX Debate or any agent will not request any money, fees, payment or password for your account in connection with the return or potential return of customer assets.
In addition, the team provides a query email address in the alert that the victim user can contact to check the legitimacy of the message or recovery offer received.
Crypto Scams Targeting FTX Customers Are On The Rise
This is not the first attempt by scammers to target FTX customers. Since the exchange led by Sam Bakman-Fried collapsed in November, losing billions of dollars, scammers got a new opportunity to deceive the debaters by promising to return funds.
Additionally, a few days after FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, a fake video surfaced on Twitter impersonating the exchange’s founder, Sam Bakman-Fried (SBF). The fake SBF scammer asks users to go to an insecure website to “double their crypto funds.” It looks real because bad actors use verified accounts on Twitter.
Furthermore, a month after the collapse of FTX, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation (ODF) issued a warning about scam websites offering to recover victims’ funds. As the SBF-led exchange struggled with its financial condition, fraudsters launched this fake website and tricked it into looking like the US State Department. But in reality, bad actors are looking for sensitive information from users.
TK Keen, administrator at DFR, noted in a statement;
The crypto trading market is liquid and full of people trying to take advantage of you. We’ve said this before, but if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We encourage everyone to do their work and invest wisely….
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