Centralized police forces have a hard time tracking down scams and frauds from all over the world when they use computers as their main weapon instead of guns.
Nonetheless, an anonymous cyber vigilante gives us some ideas about the way he tracked down a group of decentralized finance (DeFi) scammers who were responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull, how he worked with police, and how he got the stolen money back for the investors.
Under the guise of high returns on stablecoin deposits, the StableMagnet platform snared people who were not paying attention.
StableMagnet was able to get away with the $25 million that more than 1000 people put into it.
##StableMagnet #rugpull $22m and growing. Its SwapUtils library code is NOT verified and *DIFFERENT* from main Swap contract: https://t.co/Ls5XNA5UXf. @bscscan There is a need to verify the library code!
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) June 23, 2021
Before the cyber vigilante pulled the rug out from under him, he checked the code to make sure the project was legit.
However, he didn’t see a lot of messages on Twitter about how the system could be hacked and how to avoid it.
The vigilante, who is an active ethical hacker, set out to find the scammers and bring them to justice for the people who lost money in the scam.
He said:
“I just felt like this was the only opportunity in my life — to have a very meaningful impact in a situation where most people are not going to have the time and the gusto to do that kind of thing.”
Our vigilante started by finding a GitHub account. Then, he or she used social media to find all of the scammers‘ family members. This led to a group of Chinese people from Hong Kong.
They eventually tracked down the scammers‘ travel to a Chinatown in Manchester. This was a short-term move until the commotion died down.
“I didn’t want them to go to jail. I don’t like the centralized forces to come into the decentralized world as much as we possibly can.”
He took the matter into his own hands and booked a one-way flight ticket to Manchester while contacting the police in his area because the scammers were moving to a new place in a short time.
As a surprise to the vigilante, the Greater Manchester Police did something quickly and arrested a few of the scammers.
The scammers gave the police different parts of a single USB device, which had about $9 million in it.
“Once that occurred, it was believable to the other project people (scammers) that I wasn’t BSing about finding them and knowing where they were and being able to get them taught if
Following the arrests, other members of StableMagnet worked with the cyber vigilante to return the majority of the loot they had stolen.
„Maybe it’s not the best idea to scam, at least not on the Binance Smart Chain.“ This has been his message ever since it was made.
On Jan. 23, a lot of popular crypto YouTubers had their accounts hacked. They made unauthorized videos with text that told viewers to send money to an unknown (hacker’s) wallet.
BREAKING: Dozens of Crypto YouTubers have had their accounts hijacked by hackers promoting a fake crypto giveaway scam. Hacked accounts include:@IvanOnTech@boxmining@aantonop@themooncarl@Bitboy_Crypto@mmcrypto@Altcoinbuzzio@FloydMayweather@crypto_banter@CoinMarketCap pic.twitter.com/ykXkZUh9cO
— Mr. Whale (@CryptoWhale) January 23, 2022
This is what Michael Gu told us: He told us that a YouTube channel called Boxmining put a video on their channel without permission.
In a good way, „We were able to delete the video in two minutes.“
