Frontrunning a Scammer

A rather regular afternoon was interrupted by a message in the flashbots discord. I sometimes check out messages there and see if someone needs help recovering funds. This time the message seemed quite urgent. The victim was losing tens of thousands of dollars by the minute. What followed was an 8-hour hackathon to try and save as much of it as possible.

The user u/happyguy007 wrote a detailed and excellent account, documenting in real-time how it feels to fall for a phishing scam.

This is the story of what it looks like from the other side. Before we begin, here’s a short introduction on how to get phished.

Go to any public server of a known project, (e.g. Discord or Telegram), and ask basically any question where you request help with locked funds or a stuck transaction. Sketchy projects attract many scammers (if you want to improve your chances), as they often lurk in chats with high levels of FOMO. Telegram is much worse than discord in that regard, as it is much harder to organize and moderate.

Within minutes of asking a question an army of “tech supporters” will flok into your DMs offering help. Not sure how it works behind the scenes, but it seems there are actual farms of these scammers, employing personal to lurk and respond to these messages

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