Scammers Stole More Than $500,000 From a Crypto Company Employee Through a Fake WhatsApp Group

• Over the past two weeks, Hong Kong police recorded more than 150 cases of WhatsApp account-hijacking scams.
• In one case, attackers cloned a crypto company’s work group, replaced its members, and, posing as a client, sent a request to exchange cryptocurrency.
• The company lost more than 4 million Hong Kong dollars before an employee spotted the substitution.

In Hong Kong, scammers stole more than 4 million Hong Kong dollars (about $500,000) from an employee of a cryptocurrency exchange company by using a hijacked WhatsApp account and a fake work group.

Over the past two weeks, local police recorded more than 150 cases of this type of fraud. Total losses exceeded 15 million Hong Kong dollars.

The victim used a WhatsApp group to communicate with colleagues and several clients. After gaining access to his account, the attackers blocked the original work chat and added all of its members to the blacklist so the employee could not contact them via the messenger.

The scammers then created a new group, copying the name, image, avatars, and participant list of the real chat. This made the fake look like the original work group.

In the new chat, the attacker posed as a client representative and sent a routine request to exchange cryptocurrency. The employee carried out the transaction under the standard procedure: first transferring the cryptocurrency to the specified wallet, and then debiting the corresponding amount from the client’s account.

Suspicion arose when the employee discovered that the client’s cryptocurrency account did not have enough funds to debit. He called the client personally, and the client denied sending an exchange request.

After checking, the employee found that all participants in the new chat were fake copies, and that his WhatsApp account was linked to an unknown device. He then realized that the attackers had been controlling his account for some time.

As a reminder, we previously reported that a crypto trader lost about $600,000 after a fake Cloudflare verification.

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