Nearly $1.2 million worth of ether tokens were stolen as scammers succeeded in capitalizing on the world’s second-biggest blockchain network’s transition.
According to Chainalysis cybercrimes research lead, Eric Jardine, during and after the Ethereum merge, the blockchain’s transition from proof of work (PoW) to the Proof of Stake (PoS) model, roughly $1.2 million worth of ETH was scammed. Out of which, $905,000 was exploited on 15 September 2022, when the merge took place.
Eric Jardine further said, “There were all ingredients of a scammer’s dream. You had the big change that created uncertainty, a major blockchain undergoing change, and a lot of publicity surrounding it”.
It was very similar to traditional trust trade scams, where they make false promises to users about getting large amounts of money or token in exchange for investing a certain amount of crypto.
It was a classic scam setup, where scammers were able to take advantage of the branding of Merge and the lack of understanding around Merge to target unsuspected and vulnerable users.
Scammers told victims that Ethereum Upgrade would require them to send substantial amounts of money. These Merge related scams were focused on some specific countries with the Highest GDP rates, basically wealthier countries as they are more likely to invest more in the scam.
