Rising crypto fraud losses due to social engineering, phishing, and others have prompted calls from industry leaders for stronger, coordinated security measures.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has brought to light what it called a “new type of scam” in which a user fabricated evidence to claim that they had been defrauded by a company executive.
The scheme, disclosed on X by Binance staff with the handle @sisibinance, involved a user who created fake chat records and transfer documentation in an attempt to extract compensation from the exchange.
What is the new Binance scam about?
According to the Binance staff’s X post, “The incident started when customer service received a complaint from a user claiming they were scammed out of money by a supposed ‘Binance executive.’ The other party ‘promised’ to help resolve some issues, but once the money was transferred, they vanished without a trace.”
However, investigators uncovered multiple red flags that exposed the deception.
When the user was asked to provide real-time chat records, “he said the other party had enabled privacy mode, deleting all the chat history, and he could only provide a screenshot of an ‘after-the-fact confrontation.'”
The alleged executive asked only for a project name without conducting any verification. The transfer record started to raise eyebrows when blockchain analysis revealed the wallet address the user claimed belonged to the scammer actually initiated the transfer, suggesting it was the complainant’s own address.
Most telling was what they discovered during the investigation. According to Sisibinance, “The user first fabricated chat records and transfer records (the transfer record came from a certain escrow platform), then lied about the chat history being deleted. Next, he approached the real executive’s account for a confrontation, creating two sets of ‘executive’ screenshots.
Then, he took the conversation record from the real executive account to customer service, demanding an investigation in an attempt to bait a response from us, and threatening to apply pressure through social media if we didn’t help resolve it.”
Crypto industry continues to suffer losses
Exploit and fraud headlines have sort of become a feature of the cryptocurrency industry at this point. Phishing attacks alone ranked third after code vulnerability and wallet compromises, accounting for losses that exceeded $5.8 million in November 2025. Over $1 billion was lost across 296 incidents in 2024, according to blockchain security firm CertiK.
Address poisoning scams work by sending small cryptocurrency amounts to users’ wallets from addresses that closely resemble legitimate ones. Victims who copy addresses from their transaction history inadvertently send large sums to fraudulent wallets.
Cryptopolitan reported that a single trader lost around $50 million in an address poisoning attack.
Following the $50 million loss, Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder, popularly known as “CZ,” called for industry-wide action to crack down on poison scams on December 24.
CZ urged that wallets should automatically check if receiving addresses are associated with poisoning activity and block transactions, a mechanism that Binance already has. He also advocated for real-time security alliances maintaining shared blacklists of malicious addresses accessible across platforms.
Crypto scam attacks have been on the rise as the year’s curtain is being drawn, and many platforms have taken a proactive stance in informing their customers to avoid being victims of any of these schemes.
Sharpen your strategy with mentorship + daily ideas – 30 days free access to our trading program
