If you want to join me in watching metamask account get robbed by some asshole look below

My metamask wallet number is 0xc97603fc31d6e96C2A145EC44B369d5263470279

Some bustard who tricked me into clicking on a dodgy link (pretending to be tech support for SNX on discord) has taken half my wallet so far (about $130k). The rest is still there but disappearing slowly in front of my eyes.

You can see all the transactions from this morning how he/she is cleaning up.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything I can do other than jumping on the occasional ETH transfer they are making in so I can sweep it out.

The only reason I haven't shared my secret phrase with the whole world is a quiet hope I might one day get it back. But if that's never going to happen maybe I should share it with you all. After all it would amuse me if someone else steals it before @scofield#0471 takes it all.....

EDIT:

I can see people asking why am I not moving the coins out. The answer is I really, really, really tried. However there seems to be script which instantly transfer the coins to a different wallet, no matter what I type in for gas fees or the address. So far I failed on ALCX, on YFI, on SLP, on AAVE - so I have given up as I don’t know what to do a setting up a script myself is beyond my abilities. Whenever I add in ETH, all it does is makes its easier to the bastard to take my coins. So all I can literally do is watch right now.

SECOND EDIT

I was sent a link to a site which was going to validate my MM extension. The site looked real enough that I clicked on it and entered my security phrase. That was where I suddenly blew up 6 years worth of HODLing in one go….

THIRD EDIT

Normally I am hyper sensitive to security and very very wary of online support from strangers. However, due to a rare combination of sleep deprivation from staying up late to watch the Euro 2020 final, and not paying attention when I should have I made the fatal error of falling for what is now obviously a elaborate con. I’m so used to clicking approve on Defi sites to connect to wallets that my guard has as down and this looked genuine enough.

By the time I realised what was happening it was too late. I logged into MM from a MacBook as my original wallet was on pc, but it made no difference. They initially took 8 ETH, some sushi and old GNT I forgot to convert. With no gas fees the raid stopped. So I thought I would be quick and add a little gas and try and take some out. That didn’t work - no matter what I big in gas fees it was either immediately outbid (lost my aave and STETH) or accepted and went to another wallet which I didn’t recognise (lost my ALCX there). Later the fucker started liquidating my assets and put gas in to do this. I managed - and this was through the most frantic clicking and accepting any fucking gas bid at the highest price to transfer out the ETH to a separate wallet. I managed to get some out which slowed the attacks as there was no ETH to pay for the gas. This would happen every hour and I managed to get about 0.05 ETH LOL

This was totally my mistake and not due to SNX, who to be fair, warn you not to do what I did. But I was tired, had sent a message to their tech support sub and instead of reading the warning, ignored it like a noob so yeah - I own this and it’s my fault.

To those of you who think this is fake, I hope it never happens to you. I had to take a day off work to watch this slow motion disaster - I am sitting with a sick feeling, with pounding chest and periodically start tearing up which I can only assume is a slow motion panic attack. I have told my wife who is understandably shocked. When it all goes, I get to tell the rest of family that I got fucked over through ONE SINGLE LAPSE OF JUDGEMENT.

I posted this as a warning to the bulk of the community who could just as easily have fallen for the same

I used to look down on exchanges but they all look safer as least they have 2FA which MM lacks.

I’m pretty much done now with believing crypto will only change the world for the better and for the first time have been thinking, bring on more fucking regulation and make every wallet linked to an ID - that way one day I can find out the bastard who cleaned me out and will spend what I have left on justice.

FOURTH EDIT

Thank you so much to everyone for their sympathy and support. To those of you telling me I’m dumb /stupid / foolish for so much holding on MM, thank for the comments but after the first 100 I stopped reading them as they get dull quickly. It was a mistake to leave so much on MM and with hindsight, the fact that my ledger wasn’t letting me connect to some Defi sites was an obvious flag rather than an obstacle.

So since this afternoon, I was recommend the flashbots service on discord by some of you. With some (read massive) trepidation about using discord again, I posted my details and one of their whitehat guys Alex got in touch.

I won’t give all the details for now as he’s still on the case but he already rescued just over 40 steth that was staked on curve as a ETH/STETH LP pool. I’m overjoyed as that’s $85k that I had written off now back (and in a ledger before any of you ask).

I’m hopeful as to what happens to the remaining $35k but it already feels like a fuck you to the thief.

Thanks to those of you who told me some of my stolen money may have gone to kraken, I’m messaging them so I hope they can freeze the money and if I’m lucky even help ID the counterpart (not holding my breath though as I don’t know ifs it’s real and whether they will help or not).

With respect to the site I clicked on, DM if you really want to know but I left it off here in case someone else clicks on it and makes the same mistake I did. I’ve got in touch with the domain hosts to ask for their help in identifying the thief.

Obviously it not the best day in the world but feels a hell of a lot better than it did a few hours ago.

FIFTH and hopefully final edit

Thank you to everyone who has sent positive messages of support, both below and in the chat. They have really helped, especially at the start when I was super stressed with indescribable feeling of watching my account get emptied in front of my eyes and being powerless to do anything about it. The (useful) advice from people was helpful and I am especially thankful that the flashbots teams was recommended.

Alex has been been awesome. After he verified that the account was actually mine he stepped to stop the bleed (and I appreciated the fact that both the groups on discord and even this sub want to fact-check this to make sure it’s not a scam or a lie to flame someone). He set up a burner to remove incoming ETH which meant the thief couldn’t take more as there was no gas on the account. He then started to work on moving out the remaining coins to a safe wallet. At the time of writing he’s retrieved 117k from the 120k that was left (using this mornings prices). There’s a bit left which will hopefully come over but given how much was taken this am, that’s a rounding error on what I lost. For those of you who need his details DM or wait as I’ll edit one last time and add his Twitter account when this is all over and I’m calm. He has been amazing and whilst they ask for a modest fee it’s well worth it.

Thanks to Kraken for reaching out and apologies to SNX if it looked like I was blaming them for my mistake. Hopefully Kraken can help but I’m also going to message a lot of the other exchanges too - anything I can do to make the money hard to get for the thief will make me happy and maybe it might even get him caught (but really not holding my breath on that).

For those of you who keep wondering (1) no, I am not doing this for moon farming as making a few dollars and getting karma in no way makes up for a hit, (2) this isn’t a new account. I’ve been on Reddit for years but am usually silent as the chats can get poisonous quickly, (3) even I knew it was risky leaving so much on a hot wallet but I have used MM for a long time and found Ledger to be challenging with some Defi. I really wish I had been more careful but that’s done. I don’t blame anyone other than myself and the bastard who stole my coins but wish MM had 2FA which would have killed this or a way to hard freeze your account instantly which again would stop the bleed and work out a recovery and (4) for all of you who are sitting on your high horse lecturing me on how dumb this is and why you should never use your private data online - I fully understand and agree with your point of view, as YESTERDAY I would have been like YOU safe in the knowledge that nothing like this would ever happen to ME…..

It’s been a hell of day but I’ll be fine with time.

SIXTH AND FINAL EDIT

Okay so it been a surreal 24 hours. For those of you who want the full sequence of events it’s basically this.

I have a few different accounts but started using MetaMask heavily in recent months. Basically because Argent was heavy in gas prices and my ledger didn’t always connect to some of the DEFI sites I stitched to MM. Thanks to a run up in crypto market valuations, and some small trades and staking, the $20k was playing with in the hot wallet became around $250-260k yesterday.

My first mistake was leaving such a large amount on MM. In fact I had been actively considering moving some of it but with hindsight waited too too long. At times gas prices on ETH have been insane and was my pure bad luck that yesterday was one of the cheapest days around where tx were a few dollars rather than $20-70 which I’d seen in previous weeks. Trying to save a few hundred bucks turned out to be a very bad decision.

With hindsight, I wish I had got up and gone to work and the worst that would have happened would have been feeling deeply disappointed by the England performance the night before. Instead I went on to make one of the most expensive mistake of my life.

I decided that yesterday I would finally get around to messaging the help desk at the discord chat for SNX and ask if they could help me with some SNX I had deposited there on the L2 wallet. The problem was, that I was able to see the amount of SNX on their Optimism mainnet which showed SNX token only but not but not my ETH, whilst the Ethereum mainnet showed my ETH and other alts but not the SNX tokens.

I went to the sub and asked for help in the chat. Got no response and tried a bit later. That time I got 3 people replying in private chats each claiming to be from SNX. Whilst the SNX sub warns against this, I was tired and assumed that maybe it was like some of the other subs where people can advise you if the mods are busy.

To my misfortune I replied to the scammer explaining the problem. He basically told me my MM wallet wasn’t syncing back to the network and I should validate it. That sounded plausible given I couldn’t see my total balances and also in recent weeks I’ve faced a glitch as time where the wallet balance comes up a zero for up to a minute when I first open it so thought maybe he’s right.

To help, he sent a link to quite a detailed looking site which looked real enough and unfortunately, thanks to weeks of linking random DEFI sites to my MM wallet I had become unfortunately desensitised to connecting to random pages and accepting connections to my wallet

When I tried the link on the fake site, it wasn’t working apparently so Scammer suggested I try again. This time, I figured maybe I should try the option to connect to my wallet by entering my private pass phrase.

Yes I know it was dumb.

Yes I realise it’s my fault.

I’ll live with this expensive mistake for a long time.

A strange set of events in which I was super tired, not nearly alert enough and my warning radar was off meant I went for the most basic and simple phishing scam. To those of you on your high horses laughing about how this can never happen to you - good luck and I hope you carry on living perfect lives in which you never make a mistake.

A few mins pass as the scammer is still engaged on the discord chat explaining it will take some time. He then causally asks me if I have a ledger and want to sync that too….

At that instant, I suddenly realise what I’ve done and get a cold sweat. Why the fuck should he ask that unless….

I check my MM wallet on zapper.fi and see that the wallet balance has suddenly dropped. I’m now missing $20k and a quick check shows my 8 ETH, some sushi and some Golem which I hadn’t are gone.

I start to get super angry that I’ve lost 8 coins. After a few mins I calm down and suddenly realise that the only reason I haven’t lost more is there is now zero ETH on my account so no way to do more transactions.

I realise that he must have set up my wallet on his pc and started emptying it out. At this stage I’m becoming less angry about what’s gone and becoming deeply worried about the rest.

I send frantic emails to MM which aren’t answered until late in the evening and the next morning which basically tell me there is nothing that can be done in my case and be more careful next time - thanks guys, will never be using you again.

At this point, the major weakness of MM finally hits me. Forget the convenience, if all goes wrong I have literally NO way to stop any TXs (hell they don’t even show in my wallet but I can see them on zapper) or freeze the account. Consensys may have built a nice chrome extension but it’s useless if there’s a problem.

At some point I look up and see that more of my coins are disappearing. 20 odd STETH suddenly disappearing is painful. I check on zapper and can see he is putting in ETH to put up gas fees to move stuff off the Defi sites and liquidating my coins and moving them out. Now I’m actively watching the account on zapper. Whenever I saw ETH come in I tried to first move the coins to my ledger but every single time it just goes to another unknown wallet. WTF? I eventually understand that they have copied my account on a different pc and are probably running a script to automatically outbid me. I had watched my one YFI go - that hurt as I had spent a BTC on it lol. I watched my 104 ALCX go - another 15 ETH gone in smoke.

My whole accounts looks fucked and all I can literally do is watch….

Around this point I send my first panicked message that I was down 130k and likely to lose the whole lot. I figure maybe between the likely ridicule and crap I will get, maybe a I will get lucky with some help.

In the meantime all I can do is try to run slight interference by trying to move some of the ETH that the thief was adding to another account. Strangely moving ETH to another wallet appears to be the only coin I could impact. When I can moved it I try and run a tx and cancel it with a high gas fee to disrupt the ETH balance and screw up his transfers. This slows the bleeding but it’s not over and I don’t know what I can do. I read messaged here about trying other pcs, logging out of MM

When I first posted on Reddit I was down about half with the remaining amount staked on curve (alcx/ETH LP, zrx/ETH LP, ETH/stETH LPs) which was around 120k. Don’t know why they were last but thank god they were there.

In between the usual trolls and assholes calling me a liar, there were messages of support and some very helpful suggestions on then flashbots discord sub (initially sent to me by the SNX subs).

I messaged flashbots and Alex from there got in touch. I gave him full info and access to my account (after he checked to verify it was mine). Even he commented that I shouldn’t do this lost track of how many times I heard that yesterday) but as my account was already compromised I had to trust it would be okay as without it he couldn’t do anything/

He explained that he would first set up a burner so any ETH coming in would be immediately burned leaving no gas for transfers. This was quickly set up which closed the gate on the thief for the short term.

For those of you checking the wallet history you can see some incoming ETH which then immediately is removed - that scammer’s ETH he’s wasting now. I didn’t want to alert him as to what was happening, so there was minimal mentions of this on my posts to Reddit, which I’m still checking as this forum has some very useful feedback.

Over the next 8 hours Alex then managed to start moving the rest to a hard wallet and basically recovered all of my remaining balance minus some dust and dai staked on alchemix which I can’t get back so it’s all there which was around 117k out of 120k. I don’t know how he did it - if you really want to know go to discord and ask him - but I am overjoyed that he did what he did. It’s amazing for both his stepping in and spending hours to save this and no less for his 100% total honesty and integrity. If he had move the coins elsewhere and told me it was the original thief I would never have known.

In the end I’ve lost about 55 ETH and saved about the same (values were all over the place as the market tanked in the evening).

I didn’t post for moons or karma. I posted as a warning and for help and I’m glad I did. I would never have found the courage to trust flashbots without it. I would not have been alerted to the scammer using Kraken to deposit the stolen coins.

To those of you who offered financial support/crypto/gofundme, thank you so much but there is really no need. Alex has saved a big chunk and I will be alright. Losing this amount of coins thanks to a scam is painful but if I couldn’t stomach large swings I wouldn’t have held on for years - if I can live through a 80% drawdown in BTC and ETH a few times, then I’ll come back from this okay (however for a while will stop measuring my crypto value in $ rather than #coins lol).

Thank you very much to everyone who offered emotional support and well wishes. They are very much appreciated and more than make up for the large number of trolls and morons who like to throw around shit. Please don’t worry about me. My wife, whilst initially shocked and upset, is fully supportive and I have every confidence I will do really well (especially after EIP 1559 and later ETH 2.0)

To the libertarians, outraged that I’ve swung to side of more regulation, I want to say that I still believe that you should do what you want - legally. It doesn’t have to be totally anonymous - hell half the problem with the current version of the internet is anonymous trolls fuming lies and crap everywhere.

For crypto to go truly mainstream you need some degree of safety and the ability to follow up and prosecute crimes. Watching some c*** screw me over in real time was an infuriating and humbling experience and definitely made me resent the anonymity of the scammer…..

BTW for those of you who go on about being your own bank good luck and come back to the real world where actual banks are regulated and safe (unlike the current Wild West of crypto Defi) and remember many of us don’t want to be our own bank. I never thought and bought coins like ETH for other reasons. I like the blockchain and the crypto space as they are exciting and disruptive ideas that will hopefully make a new version of the internet in due course and change the world. However like the internet 2.0, no matter how it starts, eventually governments will step in more regulation is coming.

Mr scammer, I’ve already reported you to a bunch of exchanges where you seem to be staking your stolen coins and even if I can’t get you immediately, your records are permanently there on the blockchain and one day you will be fucking found….

Finally thanks again to Alex!

For those of you who asked about him, his Twitter handle is @amanusk_

Check him out, he’s one of the really good ones and a true legend and a gent.