- It was a phishing effort targeting unsuspecting customers.
- The bulk of the stolen funds are still sitting in Monkey Drainer’s wallet balance.
The renowned fraudster “Monkey Drainer” has stolen about 700 ETH, or around $1M, in the previous 24 hours. Wallets with the last digits 0x02a and 0x626 were two of the most affected by this fraud. Losing a combined total of almost $370,000. Initially thought to be a hack, it turned out to be a phishing effort. Targeting unsuspecting customers who had crypto or NFTs in their wallets.
Reports indicate that one of the victims lost 1 BAYC, 1 CloneX, 36,400 USDC, and 12 additional NFTs, for a grand total of about $150,000. The second victim has suffered a loss of almost $220,000 in cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, and popular sports NFTs. Emails with malicious links were sent, and fake websites were created to appear like the real thing. Users were duped into linking their wallets and authorizing cryptocurrency transactions.
Automated Bots Utilized
Nonetheless, the network has rejected a number of these transactions after being reported and banned against the scammer’s wallet. The creators of Monkey Drainer utilized automated bots to flood the comments of almost every cryptocurrency-related article on Twitter once the news broke. The spammer’s access to further wallets remains unclear, though, so additional malicious transactions may potentially be added to the network in the future. As of the writing of this news item, the bulk of the stolen funds are still sitting in Monkey Drainer’s wallet balance.
ZackXBT, a self-proclaimed crypto investigator on Twitter, was the first to discover this phishing scam. By then, it was too late, as the exploiters had already made off with roughly a million dollars’ worth of crypto and NFTs.
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