Hello friends from SWAPD.
A while ago I came across this very clever Cryptocurrency scam.
The Scam!
Like every other scam, the scammer first tries to be nice to you and tries to build the trust. They then introduce you to a new method of crypto mining which they call “Cloud Computing Mining”. Wait! That’s not some normal Cloud Mining. They’ll tell you that you can literally make ETH just by storing some USDT in your own crypto wallet (Coinbase mostly). The logic they give behind this is the USDT that you store in your crypto wallet generate the hash value for the miners to mine the ETH easily hence giving you some ETH in return. They use technical terms like ‘Smart Contracts’, ‘Market Making’, ‘DeFi’ etc and some easy-to-fall-for terms like Stable, No risk, Passive income method (All classic scamming techniques).
In my case I was told that this is a really hidden thing and very few people know about it. The scammer will give you a link saying you’ll be able to start mining ETH on coinbase wallet and you will be able to mine it by just holding some USDT in your own coinbase wallet without needing to transfer it anywhere. The link that they provide is actually a DApp link which you will only be able to access with your decentralised/web3 wallet, in this case, Coinbase Wallet.
Once you open that link, you’re exposed to a phishing website/DApp made on Etherium Network that imitates the Coinbase User interface. It looked like this in my case:
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They will try their best to associate this whole thing with Coinbase just to make you trust it more. Even send you some fake screenshots of it working for them.
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They will then ask you to pay the initial fees to get your “Miner’s Certificate” to join the mining pool. They will even try to be so kind and send you some real ETH (worth $30-$50) telling you to pay the joining fees, gaining your trust. You feel the person has in fact paid on behalf of you so what can possibly go wrong? You’re not spending anything as of now…and that’s where the trick happens. This fee he/she just sent you to pay is actually the gas fee. A gas fee is required to execute every single command on any DApp as it’s running on Etherium Network.
Think of it like this, every activity/command on Etherium Network requires a gas fee to be executed. The command here is actually to give your wallet’s access to that malicious DApp so when you store the USDT in your own wallet trying to mine the eth after the scammer has won your trust and you’re thinking the USDT is still in your wallet and you’re not sending it to anywhere so it’s safe, that’s when you will be rekt. The DApp you just gave access to over your wallet will sweep off all your crypto and leave you only with regrets.
If you have ever accessed any similar DApp in past with your wallet or you’re not sure about it. I will encourage you to read this article and revoke any such access of those malicious DApps from your Crypto Wallet.
How I figured it:
I knew the website is fishy looking at its domain name (coinbasecloud.club). Even though their interface looked just like Coinbase, I was awake enough to figure out most of the buttons on the website/DApp is just some idle PNG sitting there to make it look original and are not actually clickable. (like the ‘attachment’ button on their chat-bot window is not even clickable)
Also, the concept that just storing some USDT can generate a hash value algorithm to mine ETH didn’t make any sense to me. There was also an explanation on their website about how it works but it all looked vague to me.
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When asked some legit questions, the answers were very absurd and nuclear
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I then backtracked the wallet address on etherscan.io, the address from where the scammer had sent me the $30 ETH from, and that left me surprised. It wasn’t some common activity going out there. It’s so bigger than I thought.
I also tried to fetch lies from the scammer’s trust-building messages (Pictures they sent me, their social media profile was a stolen one, they were using somebody else’s Identity who I was able to find with reverse image lookup)
