This article is reproduced from the IT House. It is reported that Sebastian will always remember the moment he lost 407,000 pounds (approximately 560,000 U.S. dollars), and was angry with the news on the morning of March 17th, Beijing time. , And ashamed.
The night before this was also an unforgettable night. Before going to bed, he and his wife watched a TV series on Netflix. After that, his wife went to bed while he was lying on the sofa playing with his mobile phone.
Later, he received a Twitter notification showing news about Elon Musk. Sebastian told the media: "Musk wrote on Twitter,'Dojo 4 Doge?' I want to know what that means."
"There is also a link to a new event below, so I clicked it and saw that he was giving away bitcoins!" There was also a timer counting down, and the website promised participants that they could double the money.
This event is clearly the responsibility of Elon Musk’s Tesla team. It invites people to send anything from 0.1 Bitcoin (worth about 4,300 pounds) to 20 Bitcoin (about 860,000 pounds), and the team will send back twice the amount.
Invest 10 bitcoins
Sebastian carefully checked the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name, and then tried to decide whether to send 5 or 10 bitcoins. "'Take the maximum value', I thought, this is absolutely true, so I sent 10 bitcoins."
For the next 20 minutes, as the timer gradually expired, Sebastian has been waiting for the prize to fall into his Bitcoin wallet. He sits at his home in Cologne, Germany, and refreshes his screen every 30 seconds. He had seen Musk posted a new obscure tweet on Twitter before, so he felt relieved about this gift message.
But slowly, the timer on the website dropped to zero, and Sebastian said: "I started to realize that this is a large-scale fraud."
"I leaned my head on the sofa cushion and my heart was beating very hard. I think I just threw away everything, including the capital to improve my living standards, my early retirement fund, and the opportunity to vacation with my kids."
"I went upstairs, sat on the edge of the bed, and told my wife. I woke her up and told her that I had made a big mistake, a very big mistake."
Sebastian did not sleep that night. Instead, he spent a few hours emailing scammers' websites and posting fake Elon Musk's Twitter account on Twitter, trying to get back some or all of his funds.
However, he finally began to accept the fact that the money was gone forever. In Amsterdam, 133 miles away, an analyst at the blockchain analysis company Whale Alert saw with horror that Sebastian’s 10 bitcoins were transferred and cashed out anonymously a few days later.
For months, Whale Alert has been trying to get the authorities to take action against the fraud, but the latter did not take any action.
Whale Alert analysts use a public ledger that displays all changes in cryptocurrencies in real time to spot trends and track funds. They have determined which Bitcoin addresses or wallets are operated by so-called "giveaway scammers" and have tracked the increasing amount of money they are making. Sebastian’s 10 bitcoins were the most lost in a transaction they recorded.
The amount stolen hit a record high
Researchers say that scammers defrauded a record amount of money in 2021. Compared with the total of 16 million US dollars in 2020, they have earned more than 18 million US dollars (about 13 million pounds) in the first three months of this year.
The data also shows that the number of victims this year is expected to exceed previous years. In 2020, about 10,500 people will be deceived. But the researchers said they have tracked 5,600 remittances this year.
Frank van Weert, the founder of Whale Alert, said it is difficult to explain why such scams are not only prevalent, but also increasingly successful.
Since the emergence of fraud in 2018, the actual technology of criminals has not changed much. The Twitter accounts they created look like the accounts of celebrities like Elon Musk or billionaire investor Chaath Palihapitiya.
In some cases, such as the case of defrauding Sebastian, criminals used stolen celebrity accounts to ensure that they had a blue "verified" mark to make the account look more credible.
They wait for the real account to post on Twitter and post a reply, making it feel like celebrities have posted a scam to millions of fans.
Although Twitter is a very popular platform, you can also find "giving away" scams on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Waite said: “We don’t have any data to explain this, but this may be related to the broader Bitcoin market. When the price of Bitcoin rises, people go crazy, many of them are newbies to the market, and they want This idea of making money fast."
"People like Elon Musk, a staunch supporter of digital cryptocurrency, will give away Bitcoin, which sounds quite reasonable."
Waite also said: "The people who are deceived are not uneducated. We have received e-mails from people who have lost Bitcoin, and they are articulate."
Van Wetter also believes that some of the larger cryptocurrency sites give away bitcoins for free to promote their services, which may be one of the reasons for people's confusion.
I'm not a fool
Three weeks later, Sebastian is still very embarrassed. In an email conversation with reporters, he insisted that he was "not the biggest idiot in the world."
"I have studied in the IT industry and have a good marketing job. I live with my wife and two children. We have a beautiful house with a garden. I was greedy that night and it made me'blind' Up."
Sebastian is 42 years old. In 2017, he invested $40,000 in Bitcoin for the first time. As the value of Bitcoin on the open market rose, he quickly paid back. He cashed and got back the initial money, and later, when the value of these 10 bitcoins rose to nearly 500,000 euros, he was excited.
It's too easy to steal Bitcoin
Sebastian hopes that international organizations will take action against scammers and that Bitcoin exchanges can actively help.
He said: "It's too easy to steal Bitcoin. All trading platforms should know who their customers are and whether a particular wallet address is used by thieves."
In fact, the most high-profile Bitcoin “giving away” scam occurred in July 2020. At that time, Twitter was hit by a short-lived large-scale hacking, and crooks could use the accounts of celebrities such as Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian-West, and Elon Musk to post tweets. Text.
In that incident, hackers stole more than 118,000 U.S. dollars worth of Bitcoin, and three people were eventually arrested.