Leaked Wallet Scam

Introduction

A leaked wallet scam is a type of scam in which the victim is led to believe that it has access to a leaked crypto wallet. Wallet holds a lot of altcoins, but in order to withdraw them, a gas fee needs to be paid. If the victim transfers his coins in order to pay the gas fees, all of the transferred funds are lost.

Scam type

Wallet scams.

Purpose

The purpose of the leaked wallet scam is to accumulate assets from the victims who send their crypto in order to settle the gas fees on the leaked wallet.

Attacker

The attacker is the owner of the leaked wallet. The attacker also owns a flashbot that constantly monitors the leaked wallet’s balance. If the flashbot detects any new balance on the leaked wallet, the balance is immediately withdrawn to the attacker’s wallet.

Victim

Victims of the leaked wallet scams are users looking into accessing someone else’s wallet and withdrawing the assets to theirs.

How does the leaked wallet scam work?

In order for the attacker to succeed, the user has to take the following actions:

• The user has to access the leaked wallet by typing in the leaked secret recoverty phrase.
• Once the user opens the wallet, the user can see that the wallet holds a large sum of altcoins, but no native currency of the network on which the altcoins are deposited. Typically the altcoins are on Ethereum, but this scam works on any blockchain.
• In order to withdraw the altcoins, the victim first has to deposit some ETH to the wallet in order to settle the gas fees.
• If the user sends his ETH to the wallet, the user becomes the victim. All of the sent assets are immediately transfered by a flashbot directly to ther attacker and the leaked wallet’s ETH balance is reset to zero.

How to protect yourself?

Unlike most other scams, this scam works on the principle of bad karma. If you are trying to access someone else’s wallet then you have to be prepared to lose yours.

For maximum protection:

• Do not try to steal anyone’s crypto. If you find a leaked wallet, do the right thing and leave it alone.
• Consider holding your crypto in a cold wallet.
• Consider using a VPN service to protect your privacy.
• Do not send money to addresses that you cannot verify. Do not send crypto to anyone you don’t know.

Stay safe out there.