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Scam alertOngoingAbout $59 million across roughly 63,000 victims (one campaign, per Scam Sniffer)

'Connect wallet' pages behind search ads have drained millions

One drainer kit spread through Google and X ads took about $59 million from roughly 63,000 people. If a page from an ad asks you to connect or sign, stop.

By CryptoCasinos.help Editorial Team· Published

The scam

A “wallet drainer” is a fake site that asks you to connect your crypto wallet and approve a transaction. The approval looks routine, but it gives the scammer permission to move your coins and tokens. The wallet can be emptied within minutes, and the transfers cannot be reversed.

Drainers don’t wait for you to find them. They pay for search and social ads so that their page shows up when you search for a known crypto brand.

  • MS Drainer: in December 2023 the security firm Scam Sniffer reported that this drainer kit, spread through phishing ads on Google and X, took about $59 million from around 63,000 victims in nine months.
  • Fake NFT marketplace on Google and Bing: in August 2023 Malwarebytes documented an ad for a copy of the LooksRare NFT site. The copy asked visitors to connect a wallet, and one victim reportedly lost about $300,000 in NFTs. The fake domain had been registered only recently.

Crypto casinos that let you play straight from a wallet are an easy brand to copy in the same way.

How to protect yourself

  1. Never connect a wallet to a site you reached from an ad. Use a bookmark or the casino’s address typed by hand.
  2. Read what you are signing. If your wallet asks for “unlimited” spending, “setApprovalForAll”, or a signature you don’t understand, reject it.
  3. Keep a separate wallet for gambling with only what you plan to play with. Keep savings in a different wallet that never connects to sites.
  4. Check and revoke old approvals with your wallet’s own tools or a revoke checker, especially after a suspicious signature.
  5. If you approved something by mistake, move the remaining funds to a fresh wallet right away, then revoke the approval.

Sources

Right of reply: we contact every casino named in a report before publication and update this page with its response. Operators can contact us via the report page.

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