Crypto Users Suffer $47 Million Loss to Phishing in February

Over 57,000 users fell victim to phishing scams, losing approximately $47 million in digital assets, according to a study by Scam Sniffer.

? [1/6] ScamSniffer’s February Phishing Report
In February, about 57,000 victims lost approximately $47 million to crypto phishing scams.
Compared to January, the number of victims who lost over $1 million decreased by 75%. pic.twitter.com/UgZk0K91lH

— Scam Sniffer | Web3 Anti-Scam (@realScamSniffer) March 10, 2024

Experts noted that most incidents involved fake accounts on the social network X, which posted malicious links in comments.

Last month, criminals took control of the profiles of MicroStrategy and Notcoin to distribute spam.

According to Scam Sniffer, 78% of the attacks targeted the Ethereum network, with ERC-20 tokens making up 86% of the assets in the perpetrators’ wallets.

In most cases, users signed phishing permissions and confirmed transactions through Permit, EnhanceAllowance, and Uniswap Permit2 contracts.

A significant number of perpetrators began using Safe wallets or account abstraction to confirm malicious transactions.

Despite the increase in phishing victims, February saw a decrease in the number of users who lost more than $1 million.

FBI Data

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that fraud related to digital asset investments accounted for the largest portion (86%) of citizens’ investment losses in 2023.

According to the agency’s report, this figure increased by 53%—from $2.57 billion in 2022 to approximately $3.94 billion. The total investment losses in the United States amounted to $4.57 billion.

The FBI emphasized that an increasing number of victims are drawn into criminal crypto projects, “lured by the promise of significant investment returns.”

One of the most common scams is “romance fraud,” where a criminal impersonates someone else on dating sites to deceitfully extract money.

As reported by Immunefi, in January, crypto projects lost approximately $126.8 million due to hacking and fraud across 19 separate incidents.