[Don Cezar]

Watching Youtube I came across a comment of a presumably older dude asking for advice about a crypto wallet and 'mistakenly' sharing his 12-word passphrase. Curiosity got the best of me and I logged into the wallet to find that it actually has $661 in USDT (Tron), but with a catch - no Tron balance to make a transfer. Going into the TRX transaction history I can see that people tried to fill up this balance to take the money out but not even a minute later, the TRX goes out to what I assume is the scammer's other wallet.

I'm wondering if any of y'all noticed this scam in action before and if there's any way to rip this guy off, not even necessarily taking his money but just wiping his wallet somehow.

[Binance]

These are often locked USDT (often youll see them locked with much, much more ~100k or so and you must pay 5% or whatever as "gas")
and the moment the "gas", or tron in this case, is received in the dummy wallet, it is sent by the original wallet owner to their real wallet as you've described.

The USDT is likely locked in the wallet permanently or staked.

[Charlie Sheen]

Yes that's a very common scam. You constantly see bots entering crypto groups on telegram and saying "I found a piece of paper on my boyfriend's desk with these 12 words does anyone know what this is". There's a dozen different takes on that one.

[Don Cezar]

The USDT is likely locked in the wallet permanently or staked.

What does locked or staked mean, for someone with only basic crypto knowledge? If there wasn't a bot automatically withdrawing the TRX, you wouldn't be able to withdraw the USDT even with enough balance?

What about reverse-scamming the guy? Writing a bot that takes the TRX added by 'victims' faster than the scammer can withdraw it? I guess it'd be very hard to be faster but possible?

[Motusora]

it's called honeypot wallet scam , i've seen them in social media or they even message you in telegram

[Mewtwo]

Yep, those are scam wallets. In a way it’s good because no one should be stealing funds from a person who accidentally leaked his seed anyways hahahahaha.

[Prawnster]

Yep, those are scam wallets. In a way it’s good because no one should be stealing funds from a person who accidentally leaked his seed anyways hahahahaha.

No honour amongst thieves as they say!

These sort of scams are fair game imo, if ur ready to steal $600 from someone who (seemingly) made a mistake, you should be able to get robbed too :D

[Costanza]

Just recently got into crypto , good to know this is a thing thank you.

[Braco22]

it's called honeypot wallet scam , i've seen them in social media or they even message you in telegram

Exactly, it's just people have been doing it with much larger accounts. It's a malicious contract that's accepted by the poisoned wallet and anytime a transaction comes to the wallet (TRX or USDT) it is automatically re-routed to another TRX address, in a split second, so this way on one can drain/take the USDT.

[Net]

If it looks too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

[Omniscient]

Classic crypto scam dangling money in front of greedy people that think they've come across an opportunity if they only spend a few bucks. Spend $100 and get $500, worth it...except it's scam.

I just wish people weren't so fucking stupid and greedy.