As a seasoned crypto investor with several years of experience in the industry, I’ve seen my fair share of scams and fraudulent activities. However, the recent case of Lan Mou, who allegedly stole over 40,000 STRK tokens worth over $91,000 by assuming other people’s identities to claim their airdrop rewards, is a new low even for me.
Chinese officials have apprehended an individual believed to be involved in creating false identities associated with the StarkNet (STRK) airdrop distribution.
As a crypto investor, I’ve come across suspicious activity involving an individual who has fraudulently assumed other people’s identities and submitted more than 40 false Early Community Member Program (ECMP) airdrop forms. By doing so, they have deceitfully claimed over 40,000 STRK tokens that originally belonged to the victims.
After the airdrop event, I observed that approximately 40,000 STRK tokens were moved from the suspect’s wallet to an OKX account. Subsequently, these tokens were exchanged for over $91,000 in Tether (USDT) during the same timeframe, based on information from a local media report published on April 30th.
In the Guangdong Province on the 25th of April, Lan Mou, who is under investigation, was apprehended by the authorities together with a computer and two cellphones.
In the world of cryptocurrencies, scams and phishing attempts are rampant. However, an instance of massive identity theft aimed at stealing other users’ airdrops appears to be a novel development in this sphere.
Crypto airdrops represent the distribution of freshly minted digital currencies, typically to those who have previously engaged with a specific blockchain project.
The StarkNet Foundation, which backs the Ethereum layer-2 Starknet network, distributed a 700 million STRK token reward on February 20th. This airdrop was designed to recognize Ethereum solo and liquid stakers, Starknet developers and users, along with projects and developers not part of the Web3 community.
In under 90 minutes, a large number of people successfully claimed the initial distribution of 45 million STRK tokens through the airdrop.
STRK airdrop was filled with airdrop squatters
On February 20th, the anonymous developer Banteg from Yearn.finance issued a cautionary statement regarding StarkNet’s eligibility list. He noted that a significant portion of this list consisted of individuals who specialized in airdrops, otherwise known as airdrop hunters. These professionals focus on farming protocols exclusively for the purpose of receiving airdrops, driven by potential financial rewards.
Based on the information provided by the developer, around 701,544 out of the 1.3 million potential wallet recipients were reportedly associated with repeated or renamed GitHub accounts. These individuals, referred to as “airdrop squatters,” typically utilize multiple addresses in an attempt to maximize their airdrop rewards by farming the same distribution event.
In early spring this year, it came to light that individuals who participated in the ARB airdrop event of Arbitrum managed to amass a total of $3.3 million in tokens from 1,496 different wallets, and transferred them into only two wallets they had previously owned.
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2024-05-01 12:47