Exit Scams Made over $45 Mln in Losses in May

A recent report showed that the amount of cryptocurrency lost due to exit scams, where a cryptocurrency or NFT developer disappears and leaves with investors’ money, had surpassed the amount stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in May.

The report was issued this month by Beosin, a leading global blockchain security company, saying the amount of the crypto lost due to rug pulls recorded more than $45 million in six incidents in May, according to Cointelegraph. While the attacks on the DeFi projects in May recorded 10 with losses estimated at $19.7 million, which is considered an 80% decline, compared to April.

Losses of such attacks are on the decline over the past two months, the report noted. According to Beosin, the largest rug pull that happened in May was the crypto project Fintoch, which had made losses of $32 million, while the DeFi platform Jimbos lost $7.5 million in an attack, the largest of its type over the past month.

“Hackers and scammers are gradually shifting the target of their attacks from various project parties to ordinary users,” Beosin wrote. The blockchain security firm urged the users to raise their anti-fraud awareness and be diligent before investing in any crypto project in addition to learning how to protect their crypto assets.

It also warned against using shared or public charging devices for mobile phones, which could potentially be modified to inject malicious programs that could compromise private keys.

It is worth mentioning that the crypto losses in the first quarter of this due to hacks recorded more than $320 million, according to data collected by leading blockchain security company Certik in its report on the first quarter.