Someone contacted a victim over Telegram and told him he had won a Tether Bonus of 7,000 USDT. He was instructed to enter a URL in his TrustWallet Application to get the bonus, which was how the scammer made it appear legitimate.
The victim followed the instruction and wasn’t given any bonus after paying a fee of 0.12USDT
When the victim informed the scammer that the transaction had failed, the scammer stated that it was because the victim had not transacted in Tether Token for more than three months, which is correct.
Throughout this, one mind was telling the victim that this could be a scam, while another mind was assuring him that the scammer couldn’t withdraw his money without his TrustWallet phrase. Because of this, the victim was forced to create a passcode for his TrustWallet.
The scammer instructed the victim to deposit 50 USDT to his Tether in TrustWallet in order to activate the bonus.
The scammer advised him to use Binance-pegged BSC-USD, but the victim saw no harm in doing so, so he transferred $ 50 USD from his Binance to Binance-pegged BSC-USD in TrustWallet.
The scammer promised him a 5USDT bonus if he followed the procedure, which he did, and received an additional 5 dollars. The scammer instructed the victim to deposit another $200USD so that the main bonus could be activated.
So the victim sent another 200usdt and received a bonus of 20usdt. Now accumulating 275usdt in his TrustWallet.
The victim attempted to claim the bonus via the link in the Trustwallet Application but received an alert stating that he only has one percent of the task completed.
The final task was to deposit $500USD, which he did not have, so he ignored it.
When the scammer approached him and asked if he had completed the task, he replied that he had not and that it remained unfinished.
The scammer encouraged him to keep going so he could claim his bonus, which he agreed to.
The victim checked his TrustWallet the next day and discovered that all of his money had been withdrawn with no trace.
Category: Fintech scams
Source: Nairaland/Taystee
