How is this type of Crypto scam possible?

[Brickbat1]

I witnessed twice now, a fresh token add liquidity on PCS V2, looked at the contract and it had ownership revoked, had almost all tokens in the contract, had a burn address and liquidity was locked for one year. Liquidity was large also, over $10k. Then after some minutes, in both cases not up to 20 minutes, ownership changed back to a wallet address,almost all tokens reverted back to the wallet address and wallet dumped all tokens and emptied the liquidity.

How is it possible for a contract to be reading "Ownership revoked" one minute and then ownership back to a wallet some minutes later?

I tried to watch again if they will perform the scam again and I caught part of it on screenshots,only part I didn't catch on time is the evidence of ownership revoked on bscscan, but a token watcher website I used caught it while ownership was revoked.

Approximately $1.6k stolen from unsuspecting buyers of the token

Who can explain this?

EDIT
+++++

On further investigation,it seems there is this "self destruct function" that may not even exist in the contract but can be called by the contract that empties the contract of all funds an destroys the contract. This seems to be the only way this scam is working... This was supposed to be a failsafe mechanism in case of issues..now, seems its being used to scam.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

If this is a scam then there should be outrage somewhere?

I find it kinda crazy that crypto scams go by without any major protest.

Perhaps the largest crypto ponzi ever, which collapsed a few years ago, didn't drive any protests at all. People just lose money and move along?

 

[MisterF]

Because people are stupid and greedy and throw money into these amazing opportunities before doing research.

 

[xReminisce]

People just lose money and move along?

This sums it up.
They bitch privately in groups then move along.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

This sums it up.
They bitch privately in groups then move along.

In essence it shows that the people themselves don't care. It's total financial freedom in the end. You should be free to get scammed, especially if you don't really care.

 

[Brickbat1]

These guys are doing the same scam again and again, several times a day. Someone even still bought after liquidity had been taken out..

Because people are stupid and greedy and throw money into these amazing opportunities before doing research.

Ordinarily, these checks I mentioned would be enough on a normal day for sniping fresh tokens just adding liquidity. That used to be an easy way to get in quickly and get out quickly. But with this, the contract needs to be checked - audited and that means loosing out on possible early gains. Spotting real good launches has just become harder.

One of the ones I witnessed actually ran an active telegram group for a couple of hours, raked in about $6k before executing the exit and - wait for it : deleted the telegram group.

 

[LemonAcid]

In essence it shows that the people themselves don't care. It's total financial freedom in the end. You should be free to get scammed, especially if you don't really care.

One thing is being scammed and totally different being robbed...

To get scammed one usually have to give some kind of consent.

 

[MisterF]

Yeah, it is easy money for scammers; One of the ones I witnessed actually ran an active telegram group for a couple of hours, raked in about $6k before executing the exit and - wait for it : deleted the telegram group.

They'll keep running these as long as they can and rake in as much as they can before getting closed down.

 

[Machairodont]

I'm sure 95% of crypto "investors" don't understand anything about contracts.
They can't code or analyze them, so they just follow the herd and act on hear saying...

It reminds me of the Tulip mania started in 1634, and the investment euphoria in all common markets right now.
What comes at the end is the inevitable collapse. Seems human kind is unable to learn from history.

 

[onlinemarketer12]

They are making use of the greed of the people. A new coin is launched. Everyone throws some money just to get lucky.

 

[thesyndicate]

Most goverments are warning for all the scams that will come once the market will collapse the normal markets. Everyone knows it coming it just matter on when the hyper inflation sets in.

 

[paraztos]

Please copy the BSC address so I can investigate.

 

[Brickbat1]

Please copy the BSC address so I can investigate.

There you go:

0x0489E6ADAfCA83D66446fa2240F3C39D234D33F8

 

[paraztos]

In solidity contracts, anyone can interact with the contract functions. This means in theory even you can call a 'renounce ownership', but to prevent this from happening, contracts have 'onlyOwner' on some functions. This means only the contract owner can use them. Usually, transfer ownership is such a function that only the owner can call. This means once the contract is renounced, no-one will be able to transfer it, since the owner is the dead address.

What they did is make the 'Transfer Ownership' public usable by anyone. But they added one line of code, 'Previous Owner must be the one who uses the function'. They added one more line to 'Renounce Ownership' where they input the current owner value to 'previousOwner'.

This means then they renounced, the original owner was saved as the previousowner and became the only person who can call transfer ownership on the contract. Smart, and honestly hard to catch.



(BTW I think all tokens that have any kind of emoji in the name are always a SCAM. This is just personal observation)

 

[Brickbat1]

In solidity contracts, anyone can interact with the contract functions. This means in theory even you can call a 'renounce ownership', but to prevent this from happening, contracts have 'onlyOwner' on some functions. This means only the contract owner can use them. Usually, transfer ownership is such a function that only the owner can call. This means once the contract is renounced, no-one will be able to transfer it, since the owner is the dead address.

What they did is make the 'Transfer Ownership' public usable by anyone. But they added one line of code, 'Previous Owner must be the one who uses the function'. They added one more line to 'Renounce Ownership' where they input the current owner value to 'previousOwner'.

This means then they renounced, the original owner was saved as the previousowner and became the only person who can call transfer ownership on the contract. Smart, and honestly hard to catch.

View attachment 190983

(BTW I think all tokens that have any kind of emoji in the name are always a SCAM. This is just personal observation)

This brilliance could have been put to better use. I guess criminality is just a nature for some people. Doesn't have to scam with such a brain...

Anyway , this is a good thing to watch out for. One more filter I guess. Is there any other way this same kind of functionality can be disguised so one can detect it?

PS: Please repost that portion as code for future reference.

 

[oldguyjoe]

Most goverments are warning for all the scams that will come once the market will collapse the normal markets. Everyone knows it coming it just matter on when the hyper inflation sets in.

If "normie" market collapses, don't expect crypto to survive. It wont. Crypto can not exist outside of functional modern society. Crypto can work as a failsafe against rapid local inflation or slow global inflation (read: in one or a few small countries, but not USA, dollar is a global currency, not just US's). Doomsday scenario would cause a global recession in which crypto would lose even more than mainstream investments, so I don't understnad the mindset of anyone that is eagerly expecting the collapse of the west and a new era of "crypto", thinking they will be some kind of winner for having cryptos. Pray for slow decay to irrelevancy as opposed to explosive collapse, because you probably won't survive the latter.

If US doesn't collapse, but instead just very slowly drifts into irrelevance, then crypto can and will work as a good anti-inflation investment and having some crypto is smarter than having none, just don't attribute it magical properties. Being able to produce and protect food is probably a way better doomsday failsafe than any crypto, gold, or whatever else, if you really expect a total collapse.

 

[Brickbat1]

https://bscscan.com/address/0x42B0575D01058E1A415948f7d2BD372aaF40818b#code
Here is another one, just launched with the same fake renounceownership scam...

 

[Xdfffninja]

I think BSC network needs to be burned to the ground. It's just a breeding ground for scams hosted by Binance themselves.

Funny thing is that they know that 95+% of all tokens on their shitty network are scams. Lol. They're only interested is selling more BNBs.

 

[paraztos]

I think BSC network needs to be burned to the ground. It's just a breeding ground for scams hosted by Binance themselves.

Funny thing is that they know that 95+% of all tokens on their shitty network are scams. Lol. They're only interested is selling more BNBs.

It's due to low gas. Other chains will have smart contracts and low gas too, and they'll be just as bad.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

If "normie" market collapses, don't expect crypto to survive. It wont. Crypto can not exist outside of functional modern society.

This is spot on. Few understand this.