‘Follow the Money!’ $2 Billion of Crypto Scams Found on Ethereum

According to a new study, online criminals are scoring massive paydays – billions of dollars over the past seven years– by capitalizing on the public’s unfamiliarity with cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The discovery of $2 billion of illicit profits distributed across 91 digital wallets on the Ethereum blockchain was made by Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Mingxuan Yao and his faculty advisor, Associate Professor Brendan Saltaformaggio.

The pair spent six months reviewing millions of smart contract transactions and developed CoCo, an open-source tool capable of identifying fraud on Ethereum in real time.