In just a few weeks, phishing scam ‘Inferno Drainer’ made nearly $6 million from various crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Many investors across different blockchains, including Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB), Polygon (MATIC), and BNB Chain (BNB), have fallen victim to this Inferno Drainer. Scams are now a well-known problem within the crypto sector and many different stories regularly appear in the crypto news. This time, however, it relates to a so-called scam-as-a-servicewhich seems to be a growing problem within the crypto world in recent months.
Scam service loots $5.9 million in crypto
Scam Sniffer, a platform that specializes in identifying scams, announced on Friday that Inferno Drainer’s scam service has scammed a total of 4,888 victims through 689 phishing websites.
1/ Inferno Drainer, a scam vendor specializing in multi-chain scams, has stolen $5.9 million in assets from nearly 4,888 victims through over 689 phishing websites targeting popular projects.https://t.co/OEjdzHm2Ls
— Scam Sniffer (@realScamSniffer) May 19, 2023
Inferno Drainer reportedly advertises that it provides ready-made code to scammers, allowing them to steal crypto in exchange for a 20% or 30% commission. According to on chain data are all 689 phishing websites created since March 27, March it could also be earlier. You can see it as one “malware as a service”which provides the malicious site’s software and hosting and charges based on the amount stolen.
The scammers targeted some big names within the crypto ecosystem such as Pepe (PEPE), Collab.Land, zkSync, MetaMask, and Nakamigos, among others. In total, about 220 brands were allegedly used to mislead users.
Last month, a similar scam-as-a-service called ‘Venom Drainer’ was also identified by Scam Sniffer. Venom Drainer managed to loot $27 million from a total of 15,000 victims, with the top 5 victims losing a whopping total of $14 million.
Turnover crypto scammers
Earlier this year you could already see that the turnover of scammers in 2022 had fallen considerably compared to 2021. However, last year was all about the heavy bear market and so this drop in turnover is anything but a surprise. In total, scammers still managed to amass $5.9 billion, which of course damages the reputation of the industry as a whole.