Crypto Wallet CEO Falls Prey to $125K Scam as Victims Report Phishing Attempt

Bill Lou, CEO and co-founder of a crypto wallet called Nest Wallet, has become a victim of a crypto phishing scam. He confirmed in a post on X that he lost 52 stETH valued at around $125,000.

Software engineer loses stETH in 8 seconds

The incident occurred while Lou attempted to claim the LessFnGas $LFG airdrop at the start of the new year. Revealing his ordeal on Twitter, Lou said, “I was using Metamask instead Nest Wallet because I had a test version installed and was fixing some bugs. I don’t want to seem like an a*shole promoting his own product but my wallet would have LITERALLY caught it.”

Lou is a software engineer himself, according to his LinkedIn profile. Meanwhile, Nest Wallet boasts of its security features.

Lou detailed the scam’s execution, noting that he followed a guide to the airdrop and unwittingly clicked on a fraudulent link. The article he referred to led him to a scam website, which appeared as the top result on Google. The scam website reportedly shared a similar URL but was suffixed with .io instead of .org.

As per Etherscan data, it just took eight seconds to confirm the transaction that drained his assets. Lou admitted to his lapse in judgment, attributing the loss of staked Ethereum to fatigue. He responded to a user, “I have ad blockers. Problem was it was a medium article and not an Ad. Just me being too careless and tired.”

LFG acknowledges scams as token declines

LFG has acknowledged the presence of several scam accounts impersonating them. They advised users to report these accounts for the safety of the community. It is noteworthy that LFG’s official channel on X remains unverified at the time of writing.

The original LFG airdrop was eligible for ETH addresses that spent at least $4269 on gas fees and interacted with at least one common ETH protocol. A total of 400 billion $LFG was allocated to 387,000 wallets meeting this criterion, with a one-month claim window. Unclaimed $LFG tokens were set to be burned after this period. The airdrop included plans for a second phase involving Solana wallets. 60% of the distribution was allocated for airdrops, 10% for early contributors, 6% for liquidity, and 24% for LFG DAO Treasury.

At press time, the price of LFG stands at $0.00006105, reflecting a 33% decline in the last 24 hours. CoinGecko notes that the 24-hour trading volume of $2.5 million indicates a 41% rise in trading activity.

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