Cyber vigilante traced DeFi scammers

DeFi, one of the most potential and risky sectors in the blockchain ecosystem. Although the industry can potentially disrupt our mainstream banks because of its decentralized nature, the same nature makes the industry hot as well. Over the past years, the industry has witnessed a notable count of rug pull scams, hacks, and crypto frauds. In this world, tracking down scams and frauds from across the world have become near impossible for police forces due to geopolitical restrictions.

Recently an anonymous cyber hoodlum shared an insight into how he went about tracking down a group of DeFi scammers. Notably, the scammers were responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull. The vigilante coordinated with the police authorities and eventually had the stolen money returned back to the victims.

StableMagnet rugpull scam

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The StableMagnet was a platform that lured unwary investors under the pretext of high returns against stablecoin deposits. In a rugpull event, the DeFi based platform managed to run away with the $25 million worth cryptocurrencies that was invested by more than 1k investors.

Right before the event, the anonymous renegade examined the code to ensure the legitimacy of the project prior to investing himself. However, at the time he missed a number of messages on Twitter that alerted him to possible exploits and vulnerabilities in the system.

How the vigilante traced the Defi scammers?

Taking the things personally, the active white hat hacker set out to track the scammers and bring justice to the investors. According to the cyber vigilante, he just felt like that was the only opportunity in his life to have a very meaningful impact in a situation where most individuals were not going to have the time and the power to do such things.

He underscored that he began to trace from the official GitHub account of the scammers and identified their family members on social media. Ultimately, he found a group of Chinese locals from Hong Kong.

However, as the hacker didn’t want the scammers to go to jail, he took the things in his own hands. The scammer booked a one-way ticket to Manchester while contacting the local police authorities. Surprising the scammers, the Manchester Police reacted swiftly and arrested a few of them.

The police retrieved different pieces of a single USB device from the scammers. Notably, the device contained approximately $9 million. Following the arrest, the other members cooperate with the white hat hacker and return the majority of the laundered funds.