Cryptocurrency scammers are active even in the current market conditions, which is in a so-called sideways trend and not happy with serious profits.

For example, yesterday scammers hacked the Twitter of the famous footballer Kylian Mbappe, after which they published an advert for the meme token $MBAPPE with the address of his contract in the blockchain. Here’s that screenshot.

Advertisement of the scam token on Twitter of footballer Kylian Mbappe

Although such an advert doesn’t look convincing, it still found victims. In particular, one user used the new address to purchase MBAPPE’s crypto asset for 7156 SOL equivalent to $1.03 million. The corresponding transaction can be seen in this image.

Buying MBAPPE meme token created by scammers

As a result, the value of the asset collapsed, due to which already an hour later the purchased coins were valued at only $9.2 thousand. If we exclude the version about possible money laundering by buying a self-created crypto-asset, the story seems extremely sad for the victim and attractive for fraudsters.

How cryptocurrencies are stolen

The new schemes have been dubbed pig butchering for the fact that each victim is sort of “fattened up” by the scammer to then extract as much profit from them as possible. It usually involves building a romantic relationship with the victim via text messages or dating apps.

She is then encouraged to send money for a fake investment opportunity. For example, it could be the use of a clone exchange that allows scammers to learn the user’s authorisation details for a real site like Binance or Coinbase.

Also common is the scheme of recommending a certain asset for investment, which at the same time was created directly by scammers. Chainalysis analysts have analysed the features of the new trend in the latest part of their large-scale research.

The experts noted that fraudsters are adapting their tactics both within the blockchain and outside the cryptocurrency sphere. However, at the same time, the average lifespan of a fraudulent scheme has noticeably decreased. Back in 2020, it reached 271 days, but now the figure has dropped to 42 days. In other words, scammers spend much less time on fraud than before.

Average life expectancy of a fraudulent scheme

In an interview with Cointelegraph reporters, Eric Jardine, head of cybercrime research at Chainalysis, said that the drop in the figure is a testament to the effectiveness of law enforcement efforts. Here is his commentary on the topic.

These measures are forcing fraudsters to roll back their infrastructure faster, making it harder to track them online. Nevertheless, tracking and stopping fraudsters is possible. The results of law enforcement intervention and asset recovery are encouraging.


For example, the issuer of the largest USDT steiblcoin called Tether reported the day before about active co-operation with law enforcement agencies in various countries. Thanks to this, the company has helped track down and recover $108.8 million worth of money stolen in the coin since its launch in 2014.


In addition, 43 per cent of malicious funds recovered in the past year came from wallets that became active in 2024. So it’s likely that new criminals are on the case, many of whom are working the aforementioned piggybacking scheme.

Here’s a quote from an analysts’ report on the matter.

This macro trend is consistent with the continued shift of fraudsters away from complex pyramid schemes to more targeted attacks like pig butchering.

Share of inflows to fraudsters’ wallets by year

Despite the new trend of using new addresses, about 57 per cent of fraud inflows for 2024 still go to wallets that became active before 2024. One of these largest wallets brings together the funds of many fraudsters who operate a piggy-backing scheme.

This address was first spotted in 2022. Transactions using it continue to generate significant revenue – this year alone, attackers have received more than $100 million on it.

The chances of catching the attention of a potential victim increase when scammers buy popular and long-established social media profiles like Facebook, Tinder and Match.com. The business is so big in this area that specialised trading platforms are created for the accounts.

Here’s a cue from the experts.

The chart below shows that the volume of crypto sent to these services has steadily increased over the past two years, reaching the $10.5 million mark between 2022 and 2024 for 178,000 deposits. Prices for social media profiles can range from $5 to $20 per account. That is, fraudsters could purchase between 525,000 and 2.1 million profiles.

Platform for selling social media accounts

As for the portrait of the potential victim of such fraudulent schemes, Jardine highlighted the most vulnerable categories of users.

Those most likely to engage in such relationships are potentially the most susceptible. This can include the elderly, people in transition, and those seeking friendship or romantic relationships online.

Separately, we note that telling outsiders about your own connection to digital assets is a bad idea. Therefore, any correspondence about coins with strangers who suddenly start chatting with you in messenger, it is safer not to even open and delete. Still, the potential benefit of such an interaction is many times less than the risk of capital loss due to fraud or infection of the devices used.

Huione Guarantee, an online platform associated with the Cambodian conglomerate Huione Group, is actively used to process fraudulent transactions. The previous day, it was exposed for facilitating cybercrime, with a total of more than $49 billion worth of transactions conducted on the platform since 2021.

Statistics on the influx of funds for the purchase of social network profiles

Huione Group itself offers legitimate services as an overseas money transfer system and insurance seller. At one time, the company was also in the travel business.

However, its platform called Huione Guarantee can be actively used for illegal activities, including “piggybacking,” investment fraud and money laundering. Overall, Huione Guarantee has developed into a large and diverse ecosystem.

The platform operates as a P2P marketplace that connects buyers and sellers, usually by providing Telegram addresses of contact persons, which facilitates transactions. In total, there are thousands of Telegram groups advertising or posting on Huione Guarantee, each run by different independent merchants or affiliates. Many of these are likely to be linked to criminal organisations operating in the region.

Cryptocurrency hacking


The conclusions from the Chainalysis study are disappointing. They show that fraudsters are literally willing to go to any length to get their hands on other people's coins, and they are quite successful. However, you can resist them too. For starters, you should store most of your cryptocurrency on hardware wallets, which require physical confirmation for each transaction. Accordingly, a conditional virus on a PC will not be able to withdraw crypto without your knowledge, as the private key for signing the transfer is stored on the device.

In addition, it is worth cutting off any communication on the topic of crypto on the Internet - the probability of getting on the hook of hackers and other similar people here is too high and is not worth it. And this is true even in cases where the other party promises a certain bonus for help. This is usually what they use.