Crypto Scams: Binance CEO Shares How a Scammer Took Almost $20 Million

• Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao didn’t hesitate to share a scary story of an avoided scam. Apparently, one of the top customers of the exchange almost got scammed of $20 million. 
• In fact, the transaction was actually successful before getting frozen by the crypto exchange. Between the story, Changpeng Zhao shared a new strategy hackers use for scams. 

The crypto community would have gone into mourning, assuming a new high-profile scam went through. Changpeng Zhao “CZ” is Binance’s CEO; he always makes time to interact with the crypto community. Especially with issues relating to Binance. The most recent interactions centered around a new crypto scamming strategy. Apparently, cybercriminals tried scamming a high-profile user of $20 million. In fact, the transaction was even successful before getting intercepted. 

Binance CEO Shares a New Crypto Scamming Episode 

When people make crypto transactions, they usually look at the starting and ending letters to confirm a wallet address. However, this method of cross-checking doesn’t work anymore. This is according to a scamming incident from a top Binance user. Binance CEO says scammers have found a way of making their wallet addresses have the same first and last letters. Hence, users will think the wallet is correct when it is actually a scam wallet. 

“The scammers are so good now they generate addresses with the same starting and ending letters, which is what most people check for when doing a crypto transfer. In fact, many wallets hide the middle part of the address with “…” to make the UI look better,” Binance CEO said. 

The next step in the scamming procedures is that the cybercriminals now send dust transactions. Apparently, dust transactions make their own wallet address appear in your own wallet several times. This way, you might copy their wallet address when transacting with a particular user. You might not notice without a strong cross-checking because the first and last letters look identical. 

Binance CEO Shares Tips on How to Stop Similar Scams 

While explaining what happened, Binance CEO didn’t waste time in sharing how to stop similar scams from happening. Apparently, scammers know that most people crosscheck only the first and last letters. So, they create another wallet address with the same first and last letters. 

Nevertheless, Binance CEO says users should always crosscheck the entire wallet address before making any transaction. Thus, they will know when a wallet address belongs to scammers. But sometimes, life happens, or someone might accidentally repeat the same mistake. In that case, Binance CEO says the person should immediately report to the exchange to get the transaction frozen. 

Conclusion 

Binance’s CEO made a long scary narration about a scam that took almost $20 million. Unfortunately for the scammer, the transaction immediately froze after the user reported it. Binance CEO advised cross-checking wallet addresses from beginning to end to prevent similar mistakes.