Since the beginning of 2024, Bitrace has received help from more than a dozen victims of such scams, with a cumulative loss of nearly 2.12 million yuan, which shows its harm. Based on this, this article will dismantle the fake Binance mining pool scam from multiple angles, aiming to improve users' investment identification ability and asset security awareness.
Binance official community reminds to beware of scams
Fake Binance mining pool scam
Based on the information provided by the victims and their experience of being deceived, we will reproduce the scam below.
1. The high-imitation TG group of "Everyone gets rich"
As many scams start, the fake Binance mining pool started from a TG group. Victims may be introduced by friends to join a "Binance Liquidity BNB Brickmoving Community" with about 50,000 members. The number of online members in the group is as high as 589. The link of the group is @Binance_chinesebnb (the official Chinese community of Binance is @BinanceChinese), with a black and yellow logo, which is difficult for newcomers to identify.
Screenshot of chat in the fraud group
In the group, scammers with different avatars pretending to be users are "talking loudly", one group is responsible for shouting huge profits, and another group pretends to be newbies and ask for advice. The newly arrived victims were blinded by this good show of "guaranteed profit and no loss, everyone gets rich", but they didn't know that except themselves, all the people in the group were scammers.
2. The project introduction includes a tutorial on how to make a payment
Driven by curiosity, the victim clicked on the introduction of the "BNB Bricklaying" scam project - the Binance Flash (ETH/BNB) smart chain contract will centralize the ETH provided by users into the ETH mining pool, and then distribute ETH to users who need ETH through DeFi for exchange transactions. Each transaction will generate about 0.2-1% profit, and the provided ETH will be returned to BNB in about 30 minutes.
Official video was stolen in the introduction of the fraudulent project
This is the explanation given by the fraud gang on the source of the project's profits. In order to give back to users, users can deposit ETH to provide liquidity and then realize intelligent interest generation through contracts to obtain BNB. The scam is based on the real liquidity mining economic incentive mechanism in the field of cryptocurrency, and steals Binance's official promotional cover, popular science video, BNB equity introduction and other content in the introduction page, and connects the fraudulent rhetoric with it, which is more confusing.
Another suspicious point is that 70% of the content on the project introduction page involves investment tutorials. Since most of the scammers are new users who don’t know how to operate on the chain, the scammers start teaching them at length to ensure that the victims’ “investment” process is smooth—downloading wallets, registering exchanges, buying ETH, withdrawing ETH and transferring funds to smart contracts for liquidity mining and selling BNB. The scammers don’t even bother to create a pledge webpage, but directly induce users to transfer funds to the scam contract address in the project introduction, and their intentions are obvious.
Trick users into making payments to the fraudulent contract address
3. 24h customer service small amount of payment
By comparing the official Binance Chinese group and the fake community discussed in this article, it can be seen that the former has a blue label certification, and issued a warning against the fake community, saying that "those who privately chat with you are all scammers." On the other hand, the fake community is equipped with 24h online customer service to guide the "difficulties" encountered by Xiaobai at any time.
Under the guidance of the customer service, the victim made a small amount of payment with a trial mentality, and indeed received the corresponding BNB as a reward. After tasting the sweetness, he increased his investment in order to obtain more profits through circular arbitrage, but ended up being defrauded of his funds.
The left picture is the official Chinese community of Binance, and the right picture is the fake
Case Fund Analysis
According to the information provided by the victims, the amount of damage caused by the fake Binance mining pool scam is mostly 1ETH~20ETH, and the victims are mainly novices. After analyzing the addresses of multiple cases, Bitrace found that the fund laundering methods of each case are relatively different, and there is little connection between the suspected addresses. The "Deposit ETH and Return BNB" scam seems to have several different fraud gangs operating independently. They regularly update the crime addresses, and the propaganda and fraud methods are almost the same as those mentioned above. It can be seen that the scam has formed a complete industrial chain.
Taking the address of one of the victims as an example for analysis, we found that the suspect address 0xd6...61c6 has received 16 payments from 8 victims since it was activated on August 1, totaling 23.62 ETH, worth about 440,000 RMB. By tracking the source of the handling fee of 0xd6...61c6, we found that it was associated with an exchange. The stolen money is still being hoarded on the chain. Bitrace has assisted the victim in monitoring the movement of the relevant address and guided the victim to report the case.
How to distinguish the authenticity of investment activities
Because novices lack in-depth understanding of the operating mechanism of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, and lack vigilance against potential fraud risks in the market, they are often easily deceived by such well-packaged fake exchange communities. Before investing and managing finances, it is necessary to conduct a background audit of investment activities. Here are some suggestions for distinguishing the authenticity of official activities:
Look for blue labels. For any group or social media channel, please look for the official blue label.
Official entrance. Most official activities will have a special interactive entrance in the APP, and will never induce users to directly transfer money to the address for investment through text only.
Multiple confirmations. Confirm the authenticity of investment activities through multi-channel cross-comparison, and do not blindly believe any activity link that is only posted in the TG group.
Counterparty address risk monitoring. Before transferring cryptocurrency, do a KYT investigation, audit the funds of the counterparty's payment address, and do not trade with addresses that have a history of interaction with risky entities.
It can be seen that cryptocurrency investment is not an easy way to get rich. For novice investors, in-depth understanding of relevant knowledge, raising risk awareness, and carefully evaluating the authenticity of projects are homework that must be done before entering the encryption field.
