The inaugural half of 2024 emerged as a lucrative epoch for phishing con artists, as they illicitly acquired $314 million in cryptocurrency, delineating a 6.44% ascension in comparison to 2023, per data amassed by the blockchain investigatory entity, Scam Sniffer.

In a detailed exposé on X, Scam Sniffer elucidated that within this colossal sum, approximately $58 million in cryptocurrency was expropriated from merely 20 victims, with one individual suffering an egregious $11 million loss, positioning them as the second most significant casualty in crypto larceny chronicles. According to Scam Sniffer, perpetrators predominantly ensnare victims by exploiting phishing vectors such as Permit, IncreaseAllowance, and Uniswap Permit2, which endow them with dominion over the victim’s assets sans additional authorizations.

“Substantial heists frequently entailed assets in Staking, Restaking, Aave Collateral, and Pendle tokens,” Scam Sniffer noted.

Read more: Blockchain Against Fraud: How Transparency Can Reduce Risk In Various Risk Based Industries in 2024

Victims are often beguiled via phishing comments from impersonated personas on X. Once redirected to the counterfeit site, they are deceived into executing ostensibly legitimate transactions from their non-custodial wallets, culminating in unauthorized fund access.

Earlier in July, Scam Sniffer’s progenitor, SlowMist, reported seizing approximately $20.66 million in purloined funds across 13 platforms in Q2, spotlighting private key leakage, phishing, and fraud as predominant vulnerabilities in the sector.

Concurrently, a nascent menace appears to be burgeoning within the crypto domain. Bitget’s latest analysis unveils that deepfake-associated crypto fraud has engendered losses surpassing $79.1 billion since 2022, with an alarming 245% surge in 2024 alone. Despite global endeavors to mitigate this predicament, quarterly deepfake-induced losses could escalate to “around $10 billion by 2025,” cautions the exchange. Bitget also prognosticates that 2024 may culminate with $25.13 billion in losses from such malfeasance.