A new fraudulent scheme has been detected on the $XRP ledger after an $XRP holder lost thousands of tokens to a fake verification message.
In a recent scam alert shared by an X user who investigates malicious transactions on blockchains, the $XRP community has been issued a strict warning after an $XRP holder fell for a deceptive reward message.
$16,800 in $XRP exploited
The holder unknowingly sent about 14,646 $XRP worth about $16,800 to an unverified wallet address after receiving a message that looked like a legitimate payment request.
It appears that the user was deceived by the content of the message, which included a memo reading “Safe XRPL verify message.”
While the message appeared to be part of a reward process, the memo gave the impression that the transaction was needed for a genuine verification.
However, the scammer had created the memo to deceive the victim, as the destination wallet had already been flagged as fraudulent on XRPL explorers.
The victim lost most of his holdings as the funds were already gone and could not be recovered by the time the transaction was confirmed.
What was the bait?
While the scam seemed simple enough for crypto users to have noticed, the post revealed that the holder was deceived by the enticing reward offered by the attacker.
Notably, the fraudulent scheme started with an offer promising a 10% monthly reward to the victim. The scam urged the victim to act fast to claim rewards, catching him off guard by establishing trust, such that the victim would not go the extra mile to verify the authenticity of the message.
Despite how simple the scam seemed, the attacker was able to deceive the victim by playing psychological tricks that robbed him of basic awareness and security measures.