The FBI has issued a Public Service Announcement ( PSA) issued by the Bureau. According to the agency, criminals are introducing victims to these types of games and using malware to withdraw funds from cryptocurrency wallets linked to the games.
FBI Issues PSA on Play to Earn Games Crypto Scheme
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned about the introduction of “Play-to-Earn” games aimed at stealing funds from unsuspecting users; on March 9, the agency released a PSA on this, explaining how criminals lure users to invest funds in play-to-earn games and to invest money in play-to-earn games.
According to the PSA, criminals act to build relationships with their chosen victims and gain their trust. They then get them to participate in an online game that rewards them for their actions, and then they get them to put funds into a cryptocurrency wallet as a form of staking mechanism.
Since the rewards advertised are proportional to the number of funds stored in the cryptocurrency wallet, users are incentivized to invest more funds to earn more rewards.
The game shows fake rewards increasing in the cryptocurrency wallet, and the user spends more funds to keep the rewards growing. However, hoping to withdraw these rewards, the criminals drain the deposited cryptocurrency from their wallets, demanding more funds to help recover the stolen crypto as a final theft against the targeted victim.
How to Avoid Becoming a Victim
In this PSA, the FBI offers a series of recommendations to avoid becoming a victim of such crimes. First, regarding the segregation of funds, the FBI recommends that gaming wallets are designed specifically for gaming and should be kept separate from other funds.
Another recommendation urges users to use a third-party block explorer to verify alleged gains and verify that they are genuine and truly received in the cryptocurrency wallet being used. The final advisory advises users to check sites that have access to cryptocurrency wallet funds and to periodically revoke these accesses to avoid loss of funds due to unknown contracts.
The FBI issued several PSAs last year, including a hog slaughter scam alert in December and a decentralized finance-related alert in August.
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