Atomic Wallet Scam
Is Atomic Wallet a scam? No, it is a genuine private wallet. Also known as a non-custodial decentralised wallet. And what this means, is that the wallet is not owned by a company or controlled by Atomic. Atomic provides the user with full control of the crypto held within. The Atomic Wallet website states the wallet supports more than 1,000 coins and tokens. Whilst Atomic Wallet is not a scam, but a genuine wallet, scammers constantly use Atomic Wallets to confuse and deceive scam victims. We are calling this the Atomic Wallet Scam.
How it works
As we discussed above, Atomic Wallet is a real wallet and is totally genuine. However, the wallet supports ERC20 Tokens, and scammers are creating impersonation or fake ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain (and some other blockchains too). These tokens look like the real deal, but they are not. Commonly we see the scammers creating fake USDT and ETH tokens. The tokens look like real crypto but have no value and are not real tokens.
The Bigger Picture
The Atomic Wallet Scam is actually part of a larger scam. Typically, victims are funnelled towards a fake investment opportunity. This type of fraud typically provides the victim with a flashy trading account, a dedicated account manager (SCAMMER) and promises of high returns. The fake trading account is controlled by the scammers, and this allows them to manipulate the trades and display a fictitious profit.
Atomic Wallet’s Role in the Scam
It is only once the victim wants to withdraw their investment and profit from the trading account that things start to become apparent that the investment is a fraud. The scammers have an array of excuses and made-up reasons as to why the victim needs to pay more money to be able to withdraw their funds. Such as:
- Taxes
- Anti Money Laundering / AML fees
- Mirror transaction
- Fees to prove liquidity
- Fees to Sync or unlock wallets
- Commissions to the trader/account manager
- And many more…
Regardless of the excuse, the outcome is always the same. The victim needs to pay more money!
Convincing Tactics
The victim has already seen their investment growing within their trading account (fake), and now the scammers will take it to another level again. The scammers advise the victim to download Atomic Wallet. The victim then downloads, registers and opens Atomic Wallet. At this point, the victim has full control of a private wallet which they own, and they know it is registered to them only. The scammers then send fake tokens into the Atomic Wallet.
What the victim sees is their balance sitting there, within their own Atomic Wallet in the form of USDT, ETH or another crypto. This can be extremely convincing and from the victims’ point of view, the tokens appear completely legitimate. This makes the victim think they have been able to withdraw their investment and profits, further convincing them that they have made a legitimate investment.
But these are not real tokens, they have no value and cannot be sold on an exchange. It’s only when the victim attempts to sell these tokens or move them to an exchange account that the nature of the scam is revealed.
The use of the Atomic Wallet Scam and fake tokens is just one of many tools used by scammers to convince victims to part ways with their money. As part of this fraud, the victims often need to pay additional fees at this point to unlock the tokens, or to sync the tokens to their exchange account. Which are of course just more lies from the scammers to extract even more money.
What to do if you Suspect the Crypto is Fake
Although a token may appear real in the Atomic wallet, it is always important to verify that the tokens are what they appear to be. Using a Blockchain explorer like Etherscan to check the transaction ID (the unique string of characters that represents the transfer of tokens on the blockchain) reveals a lot of information about the tokens involved.
Here we can see an Atomic Wallet showing a balance of 163,844.18 USDT, but if we look closely, we can see that these tokens have a value of $0. At first glance it may look like real USDT tokens, it says USDT right there, but the logo being displayed is the Ethereum logo and not that of Tether.
Below we can see a transaction involving what appeared to be 109,688 tokens. However we can see this transaction has a value of $0. In this instance, the wallet that transferred the tokens has been flagged as Fake_Phishing462428 a strong indication that we are not dealing with a legitimate operator.
Looking at the token itself we can see that it has been flagged as a fake token and has an Onchain Market Cap of $0. The name of the token is given as Tether, clearly, this token was created to impersonate USDT.
In this instance, it was very clear to see that this was not the real Tether as Etherscan has identified it as a fake token, but it’s not always so easy. New ERC20 tokens can be created by anyone so scammers can create new tokens faster than they can be identified, so we can’t expect every fake coin to be so clearly labelled. But token value and market cap are much harder to fake so these can be strong indicators that something is not right with a transaction.
The reason that the Atomic Wallet is key to this deception is that an exchange account like Binance would quickly identify these as fake tokens revealing the nature of this scam. That is why the fraudsters direct their victims to Atomic Wallet or another non-custodial decentralised wallet.
Any platform or user that sends fake tokens is trying to deceive you and should likely not be trusted with your money. We have talked about these kinds of fake tokens before so if you would like to learn more about them and scams that make use of these tokens, you can read our article on impersonation tokens. Atomic Wallet is aware of the scam and in response has published information warning about the scams and advising how to identify this kind of scam, check out the Atomic Wallet support page for more information.
How Can I Protect Myself?
It’s important to always be careful especially when cryptocurrencies are involved, if someone is asking you to set up a private wallet to receive funds there should be a good reason for doing so. Genuine crypto is generally supported by all major exchanges.
Checking your transactions and the tokens that have been sent to you can be a simple way to check that you have received the tokens you think you have.
If you are unsure about what you are being asked to do or why you are being asked to do something, be careful and consult an expert when possible. A short phone call with one of Cybertrace’s cryptocurrency investigators may be able to clarify the situation or help protect you from being scammed.
Cybertrace is here to help, so if you think you have been the victim of a scam or suspect that an investment opportunity is too good to be true, then contact our scam investigators today.
