Crypto trader loses $650,000 after wallet gets wiped out in seconds

A crypto trader has revealed that he lost $650,000
(roughly Rs 5 crore) worth of cryptocurrency and NFT to scammers. Domenic
Lacovone shared his experience on Twitter and sought help from experts. He even
offered $100K as a reward for any assistance.

Lacovone said it all began with a phone call he thought
was from Apple. He suspected it might be a fraud and ignored it. But it turned
out to be an Apple number, so he decided to call it back.

“This is how it happened, Got a phone call from apple,
literally from apple (on my caller Id) Called it back because I suspected fraud
and it was an apple number. So I believed them,” Lacovone said in a tweet.

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“They asked for a code that was sent to my phone and 2
seconds later my entire MetaMask was wiped,” he added.

Lacovone said he had stored his digital assets on a
cryptocurrency wallet called MetaMask.

A crypto security advisor @Serpent responded to
Lacovone’s tweet and took cognizance of the matter. He shared additional
details about the incident, including the screenshots of Iacovone’s phone.

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MetaMask stores a 12-digit “seed phrase” file on iCloud
automatically from his iPhone. As soon as the scammers got access to his
iCloud, they swiped it and emptied his account.

According to Serpent, the seed phrase is necessary to get
into the crypto wallet and must not be shared with anyone.

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MetaMask did not comment on the incident and shared a tweet
warning the users about a possible phishing scam. The company also suggested
disabling iCloud backups for MetaMask specifically. The tweet says that iCloud
backup will include users’ password-encrypted MetaMask vault and asked it can
be disabled by disabling iCloud backups.