Popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance has helped a cryptocurrency investor recover 200,000 yuan (about $30,000) that were lost after the user fell victim to an exit scam posing as a yield farming project.
According to the exchange, the cryptocurrency investors identified the liquidity mining project and after a few days of doing some research, he concluded that it was safe for him and a friend to deposit some of their funds to earn rewards.
The next day, they woke to find that the project’s website was no longer accessible and that its social media profiles had vanished from the internet. The user was quoted as saying:
I just wanted to earn high yields in a short time so that I can spend them. And I didn’t realize it was the beginning of a disaster.
The investor reportedly worked in traditional finance and believed they were “more or less experienced” with cryptocurrency markets, so much so they believed it wouldn’t happen to them. Yield farming, it’s worth noting, is a trend in the nascent decentralized finance (DeFi) space in which users receive token rewards for interacting with protocols.
Once the users realized it was an exit scam, they reached out to online communities to find other people who fell for the exit scam. One group soon emerged, sharing information to track the funds and find out who was behind the scam.
The crypto investor said they discovered a “detailed capital flow diagram made by a user from Singapore” which showed the funds ended up being deposited on Binance via 10 different addresses.
Binance, it’s worth noting, was sued by Japanese cryptocurrency exchange operator Fisco for allegedly facilitating the laundering of $9 million in bitcoin. In a 33-page complaint, Fisco argued Binance’s “lax” know-your-customer protocols “do not measure up to industry standards.”
Per the complaint, the hackers took advantage of Binance’s KYC policy, which allowed new users to trade up to 2 BTC without having to provide the exchange any meaningful identifying information. As the funds were deposited to Binance from various addresses, the scammers may have been trying to use a similar tactic.
This time, however, Binance locked the funds after receiving various messages from users, along with police records verifying the information. In its post, Binance added that preventing cryptocurrency fraud is a “joint initiative that all players in the crypto space should participate in.”
As CryptoGlobe reported, last year the cryptocurrency exchange assisted UK authorities in investigating a $51 million phishing scheme that used illegal scripts to obtain customer information from some services.
