30s Summary
Scammers in Colorado are reportedly using phone calls to convince victims they owe $10,000 fines for missed jury duty, payable in Bitcoin, with one individual losing $6,000. In other instances, people were told they had missed court dates or had arrest warrants. Elsewhere, trading platform Sunray Finance was hacked for $2.7 million and decentralized exchange Ramses suffered a $93k loss due to a coding error. Meanwhile, authorities in Dhone, India, are investigating Ramanjaneyulu, who allegedly promised monthly earnings to crypto investors, defrauding 320 people of over $297k. Both local authorities and cryptocurrency platforms have urged users to stay vigilant.
Full Article
People in Colorado have been tricked by a new phone scam where the caller pretends to be a cop. A report from Summit Daily mentioned that scammers pretending to be from the local government called people to tell them they owe a $10,000 fine for not attending jury duty. The catch? The supposed fine had to be paid in Bitcoin. Unfortunately, one person fell for this scam and transferred $6k worth of Bitcoin to the scammer. Thankfully, the real law enforcement stepped in before the rest of the money was transferred.
This wasn’t the only time folks in Colorado got calls from Bitcoin scammers. In another incident, the scammer even spoofed the local sheriff department’s phone number. They scared the victims by saying they had missed court dates and had warrants out for their arrest. But luckily, in this case, nobody sent any money or shared their personal information.
The Colorado Sheriff’s department has released a statement to remind everyone that they’d never ask for Bitcoin transfers over the phone. It’s important to remember that once you send money via blockchain transactions, you can’t take it back. So, always double-check before sending money to someone.
In other news, trading platform Sunray Finance was hacked for $2.7 million. The hacker surprisingly ‘upgraded’ the protocol’s contract and minted a ridiculous amount of the platform’s SUN token. Half of these tokens were then traded for $2.1 million worth of Tether. The exploit caused the SUN token price to plummet.
Here’s where things get interesting, the hacker forgot about a second liquidity pool for SUN. A bot took advantage of this and bought 90 sextillion SUN from the first pool and sold it in the second one, making a profit of $560k worth of Ether.
Sunray Finance announced that they’re trying to recover all the data and asked everyone to be patient. Cybersecurity firm, TenArmor, suggested that maybe a leaked private key led to the attack. Crypto users should be cautious about upgradeable contracts. If misused, they can drain the platform of funds.
Similar trouble for another decentralized exchange called Ramses. They were exploited for $93k due to an error in the code. The team at Ramses found out and managed to take control of the situation. According to blockchain security firm Blocksec, the attacker used a single nonfungible token to get rewards repeatedly without having to wait for a new reward period, leading to a loss of $93k.
On the other side of the globe, in Dhone, India, police are looking into a crypto scam. The alleged scammer, Ramanjaneyulu, is accused of stealing funds from about 320 people around India, totaling over $297k. People are saying that Ramanjaneyulu promised monthly earnings for those who invested crypto with him, and claimed to have ties with famous exchanges like Binance and OKX. The investigation is ongoing, and no case has been officially filed yet.