The organizers of the TurtleDex project disappeared, draining 9,000 BNB (~$2.4 million) from its liquidity pools on the decentralized exchanges Pancake Swap and Ape Swap on the Binance Smart Chain, according to BSC News.
The funds were converted into Ethereum, split between nine wallets and sent to the Binance exchange, according to a Twitter user under the handle DeFi Stalker.
🚨🚨 ATTENTION $TTDX HOLDERS!!!
Liquidity on both @ape_swap & @PancakeSwap has been removed 10hrs ago & swapped to $ETH, split to 9 wallets, all sent to @binance. $TTDX looks like its about to #RugPull just 24hours after pre-sale @BinanceChain $BNB #BSChttps://t.co/sON6MzSYno pic.twitter.com/y9BPXjEgoM
— DeFi Stalker (@DefiStalker) March 19, 2021
All TurtleDex social media accounts have been deleted.
JetfuelFinance, the platform that partnered with the project, confirmed the fraud.
Attention — The Turtledex (#TTDX) team has exit scanned.
We are just as shocked as everyone to see this unfold.
Please see the tweet below from @DefiStalker and help us track down the funds sent to @binance #TTDX is being removed from Jetfuel. https://t.co/ZUjRmPbrs2 https://t.co/3WvsYSWATg
— Jet Fuel BSC ✈️ (@Jetfuelfinance) March 19, 2021
According to journalist Colin Wu, some TurtleDex users contacted Binance chief Changpeng Zhao to request blocking the stolen funds. Ironically, earlier when community members asked whether they could hide with the money, the project team replied:
«No, because the hands are too short».
BSC’s popular project, Turtle.dex, rugpulled, taking about 9,000 BNB, website and telegram deleted. Some are converted into ETH to Binance, investors are urging Binance to freeze. To the question of rugpull, Turtle officially stated before: No, because hands are too short. pic.twitter.com/xqVmGShm9f
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) March 20, 2021
DeFi Stalker said that in February the TurtleDex smart-contract audit was conducted by TechRate and did not reveal any major issues.
«What is the purpose of an audit? If developers can easily pull liquidity, are we asking the right questions?», — added the user.
#TurtleDex $TTDX s/contract was audited by @TechRate1 on 21st of FEB, 2021. Whilst no big issues were found, it asks the question, what is the purpose of a s/contract audit? If developers can simply pull liquidty to dump, are we even asking the right Questions?$BNB $BANANA $FUEL pic.twitter.com/L8rxtwpnYo
— DeFi Stalker (@DefiStalker) March 20, 2021
TurtleDex positioned itself as a decentralised data and file storage platform for users. On March 15, the project conducted a pre-sale of the TTDX tokens, raising 9,000 BNB in two hours.
In February, media reports noted that exit scams four DeFi projects on the Binance Smart Chain.
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