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So if you some of you recall I wrote up a bit last week about an odd Discord notice I got about winning an airdrop for a new exchange site and, when submitting the winning code netted me a nifty 9.5 ETH. "Wowie!" I say, sounds too good to be true!
It was.
I did a lot of checking discussed here:
https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-musings-consumer-impacts/zerfaxbit-scam-or-winning-the-lottery-xomxqge
But part of me just wanted the whole thing to be true. Wouldn't it be nice in the same year of the FORTH drop to also win big on an ETH drop too? Of course it would! You'd have to be a on drugs to say no. Anyhoo, my research got me a lot of hints, but nothing just flat out said the site and racket was indeed a scam. Then, the dorks got greedy and did it again. Today I got a second "completely different" notice from this yahoo (not the search engine), but for 15.6 ETH!
Seriously?
Lots of giveaways completely kill this attempt. First, they are located in the expanses of China! Wow, um.. but China just banned major exchanged operations. Then, they've been around for 2 years. Okay, so their ICANN site registration records should match up, right?
Errr.... Created on June 1, 2021. Well, that wouldn't be two years, now would it? Hell, it doesn't even make two weeks.
What's so damn scary about these notices and web platforms they are linked to is that the sites are done really, really well. And even if they are only raking in a "deposit" of 0.2 ETH to supposedly get access to your prize money on their new exchange, that's a hefy $540 suckered out of anyone who falls for this plus whatever else these guys manage to get deposited by folks thinking these are legit exchanges.
Given the obvious pattern here, someone at Discord should have picked up on this nonsense and banned it already, but apparently it's still alive and well. I'm betting the next message will offer me 30 ETH because I held out and didn't respond. :)
Bottom line: if it's too good to be true, it is. Things don't come free, ever. I'm even still suspicious of the FORTH drop, believe it or not.
