Aussies warned to avoid crypto paper wallets they find on the street

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Aus­tralians have been warned to stay away from sus­pi­cious-look­ing fake Bit­coin paper wal­lets, which work by lur­ing vic­tims into access­ing a lucra­tive cryp­to wal­let but will ulti­mate­ly drain them of their own cryp­to holdings.

Accord­ing to a Nov. 22 post on the Face­book page of the NSW Police Force, the scam starts as a paper cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­let with a QR code, which is made to appear like a legit­i­mate Bit­coin paper wal­let.

These are strewn by scam­mers in pub­lic loca­tions such as streets or parks. 

An exam­ple of the scam cryp­to paper wal­lets. Source: NSW Police Force 

An indi­vid­ual that locates the paper wal­let and scans the QR code is direct­ed to click on a link to access a cryp­to wal­let with up to $16,000 Aus­tralian dol­lars ($10,000).

The per­son is then asked to pay a with­draw­al fee and pro­vide their own wal­let cre­den­tials that will pur­port­ed­ly allow them to trans­fer the bal­ance into their own cryp­to wallet.

“Once the with­draw­al fee is paid and per­son­’s cryp­to wal­let details pro­vid­ed, the per­son­’s cryp­tocur­ren­cy is stolen from their cryp­to wal­lets,” explained the NSW police. 

The author­i­ties have advised the pub­lic to stay vig­i­lant, and that any­body who finds a paper cryp­to wal­let sim­i­lar to this should not attempt to scan the QR code, access the account, or sup­ply their pri­vate information.

Instead, they should sur­ren­der the wal­let to their local police station. 

This is not Aus­trali­a’s first instance of a paper cryp­to wal­let scam. Over three months ago, a user on Red­dit cre­at­ed a thread report­ing they had found a paper cryp­to wal­let and flagged it as a pos­si­ble scam. 

Dozens of oth­er peo­ple from all over the coun­try respond­ed with their own sto­ries of find­ing paper cryp­to wal­lets in the street, on the beach, and at parks. 

One user, Pin­nymc, com­ment­ed they almost fell for it because they could see the wal­let address and the trans­ac­tions on-chain. They said the web­site also appeared genuine. 

How­ev­er, Pin­nymc says they became sus­pi­cious because of the 0.5% trans­ac­tion fee. 

“If this was a legit wal­let I should be able to with­draw and the trans­ac­tion fee comes out of the bal­ance. It’s such a shame because this looks so legit,” said the user. 

Relat­ed: ‘Do not delay’ — ASIC warns Aussies to look for 10 signs of a cryp­to scam

Aus­tralians have already proven to be par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to invest­ment and cryp­to-relat­ed scams this year, los­ing 242.5 mil­lion Aus­tralian dol­lars to scam­mers so far in 2022, accord­ing to data from the Aus­tralian con­sumer watch­dog’s Scamwatch website. 

The coun­try’s fed­er­al law enforce­ment agency has also high­light­ed the crim­i­nal use of cryp­to as an “emerg­ing threat” but says it’s a chal­lenge to keep pace with crim­i­nals who are con­stant­ly chang­ing tac­tics and methods. 

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