As the waves of the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial’s (WLFI) initial coin offering, scammers impersonated the false airdrop to attract greedy investors. On the 16th of the tenth month, the crypto community faced a new complex scam aimed at people interested in obtaining a WLFI token, the governance token of the World Liberty Financial platform. The ecosystem claims to deliver a single point through which people can lend and borrow and engage in trade using stablecoins.
The scammers had a fake account at X (formerly Twitter), designed to look like the official WLFI project. They promoted a fake airdrop to investors and directed them to a phishing site like the World Liberty Financial website. The fake account was completely made to look like the real one; it had the golden checkmark, which means it was accredited, while the real project account remains unaccredited, much to the detriment of the victims.
This fake airdrop was carried out to coincide with the official public WLFI token sale, which the company stated they had begun the day before. In particular, the number of sold tokens until the preparation of this article was 749 51 million. However, the ongoing sale is limited to non–US persons and qualified US investors, with more than 100,000 US investors already pre-approved to participate in the sale.
Crypto Phishing Scam Promises 1.5x Bonus on WLFI Tokens
The phishing post included the promise that within 17 hours, there will be an opportunity to receive a 1.5x bonus if the user buys WLFI tokens during the pre-sale phase. Those who clicked were taken to a fake website, airdrop-worldliberty[.]com and those who connected their crypto wallets lost their funds. Users connected to these malicious profiles were then prompted to approve a fake transaction and, in so doing, provide scammers control over their wallets through approval phishing.
To add pressure on users to agree to the site’s terms, it said that signing was required for validation of wallet ownership. But in an even more subtle turn, if users linked empty wallets, they were made to choose between ‘replenish’ or linking a wallet with the money to ensure that only those whose assets could be taken from them would be scammed.
The phishing campaign also stole posts from Republican presidential candidate wannabe Donald Trump, who was very vocal about World Liberty Financial on X. To increase its exposure, the fake site was also disseminated under the GU project’s officially created X account.
Phishing is currently one of the most prevalent and developing threats to those investing in cryptocurrencies. Blockchain security firm CertiK also disclosed that phishing attacks only led to over $343 million within Q3 2024. One of the most frequently used techniques is scams, where fake social media accounts portraying genuine crypto projects lead users to dangerous links.
In January of this year, a cybersecurity company known as SlowMist showed that more than 80% of comments from key crypto projects are spam or phishing scams. Late last month, a wallet from the crypto venture fund Continue Capital was recently drained of over $35 million, victims of phishing schemes. Another incident in August involved a DAI holder accidentally sending $55 million worth of the tokens, and as usual, there was no looking back as the hacker cashed in the tokens.
The experts advised investors to exercise greater care and skepticism as phishing scams persist and verify the legitimacy of token sales, airdrops, and project websites before linking your wallets or signing transactions.
