224 Victims Fall for Fake AI Bot Tutorials, Losing Over $500,000 in Ethereum

Between February 12 and August 11, 2026, 224 individuals were deceived into deploying malicious smart contracts after following fake YouTube tutorials that promised AI-driven cryptocurrency arbitrage bots. According to an analysis by TRM Labs, these victims collectively lost approximately 274.60 ETH, valued at around $517,205 at the time of the transfers, with the median loss per victim being 1 ETH.

The fraudulent operation involved victims actively choosing tutorials, copying code, and deploying contracts from their own wallets, which made the transactions appear legitimate to wallet security systems. TRM Labs identified 234 contracts deployed by victims that funneled funds to six operator-controlled collection addresses. Unlike typical scams, this scheme did not require victims to sign malicious token approvals or visit spoofed websites.

TRM Labs discovered nine nearly identical YouTube tutorials that misled viewers into believing they were creating legitimate arbitrage bots. These tutorials directed users to compiler sites controlled by the scammers, which were designed to mimic the popular Remix development environment. In a deceptive twist, a background script replaced the victim's pasted code with a different contract from the operator's server, ensuring that the victims unknowingly funded the malicious contracts.

As of September 2026, the nine fraudulent videos had garnered over 310,000 views. TRM Labs also noted that earlier iterations of the scam had utilized ChatGPT as a lure in 2025, indicating that the operators could easily adapt their branding while maintaining the same underlying theft mechanism.

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Source: KLEA News