Notorious Monkey Drainer crypto scammer says they’re ‘shutting down’

The cryptocurrency phishing scammer down immoderate of the astir high-profile and high-value Web3 thefts is claiming to person packed up store and is “moving connected to thing better.”

The scammer by the pseudonym Monkey Drainer posted to their Telegram transmission connected Mar. 1 that they “will beryllium shutting down immediately” and each “files, servers and devices” related to the drainer “will beryllium destroyed immediately” and it “will not return.”

Monkey Drainer’s afloat connection posted to Telegram recommending an alternate service. Source: Telegram

The scammer adjacent gave proposal to budding “young cyber criminals” saying they shouldn’t “lose themselves successful the pursuit of casual money” and lone those “with the highest level of dedication” should run a “large standard cybercrime” outfit.

Monkey Drainer adjacent recommended a “flawless” alternate work to the 1 they erstwhile offered named “Venom Drainer” and pointed to a Telegram relationship for the work that was created lone a time earlier Monkey’s announcement.

Blockchain information steadfast PeckShield tweeted connected Mar. 1 that Monkey Drainer scammer deposited astir 200 Ether (ETH) worthy $330,000 wrong the past time into the crypto mixing work Tornado Cash, attempting to obscure their funds. 840 ETH worthy $1.4 cardinal was inactive successful their superior wallet.

#PeckShieldAlert Scammer #MonkeyDrainer, who runs theft schemes for aggregate clients (a benignant of 'scam-as-a-service') announced to unopen down their service
~200 $ETH has been transferred to Tornado Cash wrong the past 24 hours, portion ~840 $ETH (~$1.4M) sits successful their main code pic.twitter.com/1lg3KLRxhk

Blockchain information steadfast CertiK besides shared Monkey’s connection connected a Mar. 1 tweet, saying the crypto wallet-draining kit they offered is understood to instrumentality a 30% “commission” of funds stolen funds from others' usage of the software.

Wallet-draining kits from different providers person copied the model, and CertiK pointed to different vendors already reporting an uptick successful requests since Monkey Drainer announced the shutdown.

Monkey Drainer is understood to have operated since precocious 2022 and is estimated to person stolen up to $13 cardinal worthy of cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) since that time.

Related: Monkey Drainer-linked scammers perchance exposed aft an on-chain quarrel

Other copycat phishing scammers and wallet-draining kits person stolen overmuch more. A study from Web3 bug bounty level Immunefi revealed $3.9 cardinal worthy of crypto was lost to hacks, frauds, scams and rug pulls successful 2022.

Possibly 1 of the azygous astir high-profile and high-value theft by a wallet drainer successful caller times was the January onslaught connected Kevin Rose, the co-founder of the Moonbirds NFT collection.

Rose’s wallet was drained aft helium approved a malicious signature connected a phishing website that transferred implicit $1.1 cardinal worthy of his idiosyncratic NFTs to the attacker.