A meme-based token Shiba Inu has gained massive popularity with digital asset investors, along with many other cryptocurrency tokens existing. Last October, it hit an all-time high, making threat actors leverage it by conducting scams on hyped-up victims.
Scammers took it to YouTube and made live videos promoting their phoney Shiba Inu token giveaways that piqued the interest of hundreds of thousands of viewers and digital asset investors. Meanwhile, other scammers used Telegram to promote cryptocurrency fraud, which also surged with interested unaware victims.
Based on research, the scams held by threat actors to leverage the Shiba Inu crypto token have an almost matching tactic.
A June 2021 event footage introducing Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, two crypto enthusiasts and philanthropists, is being live-streamed by the scammers while asking viewers to send any token amount to a wallet and promises them to receive twice what they sent, or even more.
Since October this year, the scams have reportedly gained over $200,000 worth of crypto assets, based on a study about Shiba Inu-themed crypto scams. Experts called it ‘giveaway scams.’ It is one of the most utilised cryptocurrency frauds executed.
Experts said that while the Shiba Inu token might be the most recent crypto-asset leveraged on attacks, there were already over $80 million worth of collected consumer losses from crypto-related frauds. This problem is mainly because virtual asset exchanges have lesser federal protection than traditional financial exchanges; hence, the government could not protect most victims.
In 2020, Shiba Inu began as a meme-based coin and gained its credibility after being listed on major exchanges platforms, such as Binance. It was launched by an anonymous group and is seen as a competitor against another token, Dogecoin.
The scams executed leveraging Shiba Inu have intensified, that the token’s developers were forced to release a video via Twitter to warn asset investors about the giveaway scams. They also asked to avoid joining and being baited by the scams and not to share their wallet addresses. Aside from the giveaway scams held on YouTube, the developers also warned asset investors about similar scams on Telegram, where fraudsters use fake accounts to victimise them.
