Aurora Labs Head of Product Matt Henderson Announces ‘Exciting and Advanced’ Cryptocurrency Fraud Plan OTC– a deal that he almost fell victim to.

According to Henderson, he was contacted via Telegram by a user under the pseudonym Olai who allegedly wanted to purchase a certain amount of AURORA tokens for USDC.

The parties agreed on the terms of the transaction they decided to carry out through escrow. Recommended by his trusted agent Henderson. He named him Steve in correspondence. Under this alias was Frank Brown, head of security for Aurora Labs.

To communicate during the execution of transactions, Olai has created a Discord group that includes an intermediary Henderson and a fourth party partner Gerard.

The full amount in AURORA was given to Steve and Henderson received USDC directly. After successfully completing the test transactions, Olai wrote that he sent the entire balance to himself as stablecoins and that his broker could transfer the rest of the tokens.

However, the money did not arrive and Steve contacted Henderson via Signal messenger and showed him a screenshot of a message confirming receipt of USDC.

After being asked to confirm the transaction via the Etherscan link, the scammers sent the broker a new message, supposedly from Henderson, with an offer to return AURORA to the specified address.

According to the manager, Gerard’s “silent partner” copied his Discord profile and wrote messages to the agent. The blocking feature prevented Henderson from seeing this correspondence.

As he notes, Brown’s (Steve) “obsession with security issues” saved him from losing money. Henderson also offered some advice for such operations:

• placing all funds in escrow accounts without exception;
• check transactions in the blockchain explorer and never say a word;
• always create groups yourself in chats, check identifiers and approvals.

Henderson believes that collaborating with Brown through a different channel and giving him the tokens upfront helps prevent another danger – scammers can send their addresses on Steve’s behalf for processing.

Twitter user Scott Yeager suggested that the attackers are still active on the networks.

“How curious… He was recently approached by Olai Olsen on Telegram trying to start an OTC trade and offer USDC. Is it the same character?” he wrote.

Recall that, according to the US Federal Trade Commission, in the first quarter of the year, victims of fraud lost more than $ 1 billion in cryptocurrencies.

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