Front Running Scam Bots on Youtube Marked 6-Fold Increase in 2022: Report

Scams have been rampant this year despite the market slowdown. A new type of sneaky crypto scam with front-running scam bots on YouTube has shot up six-fold in 2022.

These types of frauds attract users by posting advertisements on social media claiming to teach you how to make thousands of dollars of money in a day using a front-running bot.

When clicked, these ads link users to a YouTube video showing how to create and deploy a front-running script to generate “profits.”

• This was revealed in a new report from CertiK. After analyzing YouTube for videos mentioning the phrase “front running bot,” the blockchain security firm observed that of a sample of 232 videos, a whopping 84% were scams.
• Victims are lured to a downloaded fake bot software designed to steal funds once they try to initiate a front-running transaction.
• In 2021, Certick detected 28 scam videos. This year, the figures shot up to 168, surging by 500%
• The report stated that several videos can be clearly identified as scams from their title alone, with the common theme being – “free code and huge returns.”
• Typically, dubious videos appear to generate significant community engagement. But upon further investigation, Certik found that these are mostly bots-generated responses lending legitimacy and credibility to the videos.

“There may be some genuine comments buried at the bottom of these videos, but you can bet that they won’t be saying the strategy really works. One way to identify comments that likely came from bots is to check the video age and the comment age. Often, there’ll be a flood of comments right after the video was posted, which is characteristic of inauthentic engagement.”

• While some reports suggest that crypto scams may have receded alongside Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies’ prices, malicious entities have continued sophisticated ways to pilfer money.