A Fake Version of AssangeDAO Has Scammed Hundreds of Users

As cryptocurrencies gain popularity and more users enter the market who aren’t familiar with them, scams are becoming more common.

Less than a week ago, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was created under the name AssangeDAO in order to raise funds through the Ethereum network for the liberation of Julian Assange.

AssangeDAO ended up raising 17,422 ETH  or about $54.2 million. These funds were used to bid on an NFT called “Clock” and won the auction with the amount of 16,593 ($51.6 million).

Today, a blockchain security firm called PeckShield, reported a Binance Smart Chain AssangeDAO scam version through its official Twitter account, as you can see below:

#SCAM PeckShield has detected that #AssangeDAO (https://t.co/FmFo4FkxyV) is a #honeypot! Sell tax is 100%. It has come to our attention that there is a fake #MEME token. Always DYOR and be careful of scams.

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 10, 2022

The fake AssangeDAO version has scammed 539 users at the time of writing, according to the Binance Smart Chain (BscScan) explorer.

Beware of Scams

Last week, Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance cryptocurrency exchange, reported that there was a “massive Phishing scam via SMS with a link to cancel withdrawals”. He told the users to always use Binance’s official website.

Another scam that happened last week resulted in the theft of 900 BNB ($333k at the time). The scammer used 16k smart contracts and different methods to steal the funds. 

Scammers often impersonate influential and important people in order to scam users. Last month, hackers posted as YouTube crypto influencers to scam users.

Another scam happened in January when hackers posing as Michael Saylor stole about $1 million of Bitcoin.

Always Do Your Own Research (DYOR)

It doesn’t matter who is distributing information related to cryptocurrency, everyone recommends doing your due diligence before investing.

A lot of projects sold an idea through a Whitepaper during the ICO boom in 2017. One of the biggest scams during that time was BitConnect. 

Researching and investigating the project can lower the risk of being scammed. Sometimes scammers set up projects that don’t look like scams but they really are.

As Changpeng Zhao said, always browse through official websites and never click on links you don’t recognize, as they could be phishing scams.