New scam targeting mods/admins of crypto Discord communities

Hi all! I’m a mod for several discord servers (and also run my own), and in recent weeks we’ve come across a disturbing and sophisticated new scam that’s targeting admins and mods on crypto servers.

It works like this: someone either DMs you or talks to you in a crypto discord in a public channel, offering you freelance moderator or admin opportunities. They'll tell you that they represent an “agency” that provides short-term mod and admin support to new crypto projects. They are not pushy about it at all, and communicate very clearly (so far, we’ve seen this happen in English, Italian, and German. It’s entirely possible this is happening in other languages as well.) If you accept, they’ll have you join their own Discord server so you can get additional details.

This is where the scam comes in.

Once you join their server, you need to verify yourself just like you would on tons of other servers. Only with this server, the verification “service” they use will actually FULLY hijack your Discord account. Then, they will take your account and start posting links to random crypto scams on basically every server they can find.

If that’s not bad enough, on the server you act as a mod/admin, they won’t just make scam posts, they’ll make scam conversations. They'll make it look like you’re interacting with your community and just making a suggestion for projects to check out, or airdrops to sign up for.

I think you can guess what happens next.

I’ve seen a lot of crypto scams in my time, but this is definitely the first time I’ve seen something like this happen. It’s incredibly sinister and dangerous, especially because the person that contacts you comes across as genuine. Even the “verify” step in their own Discord server won’t instantly raise alarms, since it’s something people have to do so frequently in larger communities. The moment you “verify” your account though, it’s too late.

Stay safe and vigilant out there, friendos <3