frolic https://paragraph.com/@frolic undefined Fri, 22 May 2026 05:11:20 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html https://github.com/jpmonette/feed en frolic https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/d457daea3dbb8ed8823f517817b8e7aad1f6fcc070e9a4578b4ca6d44deca4f3.jpg https://paragraph.com/@frolic All rights reserved <![CDATA[This scammer is using Coinbase to withdraw thousands of dollars in stolen ETH]]> https://paragraph.com/@frolic/this-scammer-is-using-coinbase-to-withdraw-thousands-of-dollars-in-stolen-eth YzY9f06n4GyN3L1cHqVM Wed, 19 Jan 2022 18:36:57 GMT I was recently a victim of a scam. I am fortunate in that I only lost about $200 worth of ETH and was among the folks that lost the least to this scam. While digging into the wallet address the scammer used, I found a dozen or two other victims, losing thousands of dollars in total. And I think the scammer is using Coinbase to withdraw these stolen funds.

How it happened

I am working on a project named Chirp City. Being an active Twitter user, I wanted to snag the corresponding Twitter handle: @chirpcity. It has long been dormant, but I tweeted at the account anyway in hopes that someone is still listening. Someone was, just not the account owner.

The scam works like this: the scammer has a handful of old Twitter accounts. They scan for tweets like mine, looking to acquire inactive Twitter handles. In particular, they’re looking for Twitter handles that contain an “i”. The scammer finds a way to reach out to soon-victim by whatever means necessary, usually outside of Twitter itself. They encourage the original tweet be taken down, so as not to raise alarms at Twitter. Then they convince you that they own the handle by renaming a similarly-aged account to match the handle you’re after, but in all caps and swapping out the capital “i” for a lowercase “L”. So @chirpcity becomes @CHlRPCITY. Can you tell the difference? They’ll doctor up the profile to match (avatar, bio, etc.) and send you a DM from the fake handle. Once convinced, you send funds and they run off with them.

(Immediately after this happened to me, I took screenshots and wrote down all the details. I’m happy to share this with anyone interested in doing a deeper dive, but not publishing here as there’s a lot of easy-to-reach personal information in there.)

Once I realized what had happened, I spent some time digging into Etherscan, looking at transactions to/from the wallet address I sent funds to. I saw a lot of ENS names, so I started reaching out to any of them that I could find on Twitter using that ENS name in their bio. I quickly got confirmation that I was not the only one hit by the scam and ultimately found a half dozen or so other folks with very similar stories. It looks to me like a lot of this stolen money is funneling out via Coinbase, so I’m writing this here in hopes that someone at Coinbase will take an interest.

The scammer

The Twitter account they used has since been deleted and I doubt the email address and phone number go anywhere. I still see the Discord account light up green from time to time.

The victims

The following folks have confirmed with me via Twitter DMs that they lost funds to this scammer. Again, I’m happy to provide details and screenshots to Coinbase, etc.

In the transaction history, I can also see ETH transfers from the following folks, but have not received confirmation:

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