FBI Issues Warning on Scam Involving Criminals Impersonating NFT Developers

Celý článek

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a Public Service Announcement (PSA) warning about criminals impersonating non-fungible token (NFT) developers in social media. According to the PSA, criminals can impersonate these developers on social media by hijacking accounts or using similar account names and directing interested users to fake NFT sales pages to drain their wallets.

FBI Warns Users About NFT Scams

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a Public Service Announcement (PSA) warning users about non-fungible token (NFT) scams involving criminals impersonating developers of renowned projects. To target NFT-interested users, the criminals might take different routes, hijacking the accounts of these significant NFT projects or using almost identical account names in social media.

Using these tools, these criminals offer new or previously not announced collections of NFTs on social media, posting links to the pages where these fake offers are supposedly being held. According to the FBI, urgency is significant for these scams, as the PSA states that these operations often use “phrases like ‘limited supply,’ and refer to the promotion as a ‘surprise’ or previously unannounced mint.”

After getting the attention of interested users who believe they are taking advantage of an offer linked to a big NFT project, the fake pages linked include smart contracts that deprive users of the funds and NFTs saved in their wallets. The contents of these wallets are then mixed through a series of operations to obfuscate their final destiny.

Recommendations to Avoid Being Scammed

In the PSA, the FBI makes a series of recommendations for users to avoid being victims of these scam schemes. First, the bureau advises interested users to verify if the specific NFT project making these surprise offers has presented this kind of opportunity in the past or if it has declared that there will never be this kind of mint.

Also, when facing this kind of opportunity, users should review the name of the social media accounts promoting it and make sure that these are official and not just similar or newly created accounts used just for this purpose. “Any discrepancies in spelling, account history, screen name, followers, or creation date indicate the account proclaiming the opportunity is fake,” per the bureau’s statements.

And finally, when accessing the linked websites, users should also review that the domains involved correspond to the project making the offer without spelling issues or other discrepancies.

Cryptocurrency-linked investment fraud rose by 183% in 2022, with the FBI stating these operations “saw unprecedented increases in the number of victims and the dollar losses to these investors” in March.

What do you think about the latest FBI NFT-linked PSA? Tell us in the comments section below.