ZachXBT, a pseudonymous blockchain examiner, shared this fraud alert after observing that the same gang of con artists had tried to con other people into transferring digital assets valued at over $30 million.
Fraudulent activities exposed
ZachXBT announced the findings of a research on a protocol called Lending, which used Blast as its foundation, in a tweet on X. Following a number of investigations, the team discovered that the gang was responsible for scams that cost users of Magnate, Solfire, and Kokomo $4 million, $6.5 million, and $4.8 million, in that order.
ZachXBT claims that TVL ran into six figures in the past and that all of the money deposited in the protocol was seized. But that's not all. KYC records, including those from audit firms with lower ratings, were compromised. On other protocols, including BASE, Solana, Scroll, Optimism, Ethereum, Avalanche, and more, a replication of the same scam has been documented.
It is also known that the same group conducted rat experiments on Hash DAO, Glori Finance, and ZebraDAO. It is estimated that the overall damages incurred exceed $20 million. The professional service of legitimizing the platform, which drew significant cash from its investors, is typically contracted with as part of the transfer of value. Usually, investors are unaware of this happening until it's too late, at which point their tokens or assets are worthless.
Repercussions for investors
In their group's most recent scam project, about $1 million in funds from earlier scams were transferred to the saltrify Finance address on the Blast network. The goal of this additional liquidity is to draw in more victims.
Days after the analyst connected Leaper Finance to the frauds, the gang messaged ZachXBT, threatening him and informing him of an impending "token launch."
"Greetings, fellow Lazarus Crew members. Regarding the North Korean hacking collective Lazarus, they expressed their gratitude to the defender while also expressing their dread and affection for you. The Glori Finance and Leaper Finance accounts on X have been closed, and an error is appearing on the landing pages. In 32 separate events during the first two months of 2024, over 200M was lost due to hacking and rug pulls.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae