I'm writing this on Halloween Eve and yes, this is a horror story but also a story about greed and stupidity.
It all happened a couple of years ago during the previous bull market when DeFi was the thing and I was all over the place. At some point, it felt like money was pouring in from everywhere. I even managed to transfer $2,000 worth of tokens from the micro-blogging platform Torum to my exchange. These assets felt almost free since I earned them simply by being active there.
All in all, the general feeling was that a lot was happening and I needed to keep up to get even more - to grab every single opportunity.
Obviously, these are the exact moments when it gets dangerous. It's amazing how fast you get blinded by numbers and start "thinking crypto", meaning the dollar value gets blurry. Having too much in a short period of time feeds greed and the guards begin to come down.
Drooling for Rewards
Before all of the following happened I had read it a thousand times - never share your key phrases with anyone or we will never ask for your key phrases or password. Still, in the heat of the moment, I did.
During the craziness of DeFi hype, I didn't no longer see any threats, only lucrative opportunities.
Among many other places, I was chasing those high APYs on this platform called Harvest Finance where I could pair up assets to create farms which would then earn me LP rewards. I remember having three different farms with X tokens paired with ETH.
The pairs were created on Uniswap and I had to pay the fees in ETH for every step, every time I signed something on Metamask (sigh). Needless to say, it wasn't cheap but I calculated I would get the amount I lost in fees back soon enough in the form of LP rewards.
Everything was going smoothly for a couple of weeks until the rewards stopped for one of the pairs. Since the fees for every single action were so damn high I didn't want to break up the LP pair and withdraw my assets for nothing so I began to search if other users were having the same issues.
Back then the platform didn't have social media links attached to its site (which by the way is a HUGE no-no) but I was desperate to contact someone so here it is:
MISTAKE NUMBER 1
I made a search for the Harvest Finance group on Telegram. Yeah, I know. DON'T DO THIS. DON'T EVER DO THIS.
If a platform doesn't have Discord, Telegram, or any other link like that, they are lazy, incompetent bastards and no one should ever use their platform. That being said, in the end, this was all my fault.
So, there I was asking for assistance in a fake Harvest Finance Telegram group and quickly got a response. I was told that there was going to be an airdrop for users participating in this particular liquidity pool and all I had to do was follow a link and sign in again...
MISTAKE NUMBER 2
This part is extremely foggy, perhaps because I haven't completely dealt with the trauma and still feel embarrassed and humiliated. However, I do remember questioning the use of my password or phrases but on the Telegram discussion, I was assured that it was okay.
As a word of warning, I'd like to mention that the fake site was very well made and I could have fallen solely for that trick.
Still, the most cunning stunt they pulled was having multiple Telegram accounts, all impersonating regular users while keeping up casual conversations about whatever topics. So when I hesitated to log on to that site using Metamask, I got these "It's legit", "It's totally fine, bro", and "Was hesitating myself but it's legit" comments from about five different users.
The fuckers really got me at this point.
Later on, I thought it might have been just one guy with multiple accounts open but nevertheless, it was orchestrated quite well.
And It's Gone...
Now the next part is also a bit blurry but I do remember how the disbelief slowly turned to shock and then eventually into acceptance. This was happening now - right in front of my eyes.
I first saw a small part of my LP disappear and thought it was a glitch, pressed F5 and after the page refreshed, even more, was gone. It's hard to describe the feeling but it started in my spine as this cold shiver and worked its way to my cheeks and forehead turning into this mixture of hot, cold, panic, and nausea.
Suddenly, I realized that this was really happening to me and started some countermeasures. Metamask was now compromised and they were emptying my Ethereum wallet. Too late to save that. However, I had assets on BSC, SmartBCH, Fantom, and on Polygon too. So the first thing I did was to create another Metamask wallet, started adding chains to it, and then began sending liquid assets to my new wallet. After that, I started to break up LP pairs on other chains and sent them (if possible) to the new wallet as well.
I don't know whether I was just faster than the scumbags or were they only after ETH and didn't realize to search for other assets but I eventually managed to save everything else but the Ethereum.
Breakdown
Not in any particular order, here are some takeaways, or ingredients, that in my opinion led me to fall for this nasty scam:
- Breaking the rule of not giving passwords & phrases
- Greed
- DeFi hype
- The official site not have Discord & Telegram links on their site(no way to contact anyone)
- Being an overconfident idiot and asshole
- Not doing my own research
- Pretty well-made scam
Conclusion
I would like to compare scams like these to magic tricks which are based on distraction. The main objective for the magician is to give us the vision of a racehorse and then take advantage of that. With most tricks, we miss the things happening in front of our eyes because the magician is leading our focus in the desired direction.
With this particular scam, the red flags popped up and the sirens were loud as hell but unfortunately, it was all happening outside of defi crazed mind and I was blinded and deafened by greed.
One of the best trading advice I ever got was when in doubt, zoom out, meaning the situation might look bad on a 1-hour chart but the big picture could be a whole lot different looking when zooming out or changing to a 1-day chart for example.
The same applies to possible scams. These days when I come across a potentially good opportunity, I take a break, smoke a cigarette, and try to view it from a different perspective. I perform multiple searches and read comment sections, and if the information is insufficient, I'll leave the whole project. Sometimes it's just better to walk away.
A good thing about getting scammed really, really good is the lesson learned from it. At the same time, I hope you don't have to go through anything like this and perhaps find my post somewhat educational.
Thank you for reading!
Let's Connect - Linktree
Now Playing:
Disclaimers:
Thumbnail background image made with Canva.
