AI-powered scam just drained $517k from 224 degens who thought they were building arbitrage bots
Here's the play: Fake YouTube tutorials (310k+ views) using AI-generated hosts walked victims through "building Claude-powered trading bots." Reality? They were deploying malicious smart contracts that auto-drained their wallets.
The scary part: No phishing site. No wallet drainer popup. No sus approval request. Victims authorized EVERY transaction themselves.
The trick was a fake Remix compiler site that swapped your code for malicious contracts server-side. Hit "Start" or "Withdraw" and anything above 0.05 $ETH gets transferred to scammer wallets.
274.60 $ETH stolen between Feb-Aug. Median loss: 1 $ETH per victim.
Funds moved entirely through DeFi, bridges, and mixers. Zero CEX touchpoints.
Claude/Anthropic had NOTHING to do with this. Just branding to farm trust. Same crew previously used ChatGPT's name.
If a YouTube tutorial promises free alpha on arbitrage bots, it's probably farming your liquidity. DYOR on every contract you deploy. Verify compiler sources. Don't ape into code you don't understand.
Here's the play: Fake YouTube tutorials (310k+ views) using AI-generated hosts walked victims through "building Claude-powered trading bots." Reality? They were deploying malicious smart contracts that auto-drained their wallets.
The scary part: No phishing site. No wallet drainer popup. No sus approval request. Victims authorized EVERY transaction themselves.
The trick was a fake Remix compiler site that swapped your code for malicious contracts server-side. Hit "Start" or "Withdraw" and anything above 0.05 $ETH gets transferred to scammer wallets.
274.60 $ETH stolen between Feb-Aug. Median loss: 1 $ETH per victim.
Funds moved entirely through DeFi, bridges, and mixers. Zero CEX touchpoints.
Claude/Anthropic had NOTHING to do with this. Just branding to farm trust. Same crew previously used ChatGPT's name.
If a YouTube tutorial promises free alpha on arbitrage bots, it's probably farming your liquidity. DYOR on every contract you deploy. Verify compiler sources. Don't ape into code you don't understand.