Aurora Labs Executive Almost Falls For Scam, Gives Full Details

Aurora labs executive Matt Henderson, who is head of product, almost fell for a scam and was about to lose his tokens to a con artist when his alert escrow agent intervened with a screenshot.

A clever over-the-counter (OTC) transaction scam, according to Matt Henderson, head of product at Aurora Labs, nearly caused him to lose a stockpile of his hard-earned bitcoin.

On August 5, Henderson told his Twitter followers about a firsthand encounter he had with the con artist known only as “Olai.”

Today I nearly got caught by a fascinating and devious crypto scam during an OTC transaction. Read on to learn what happened, so you can avoid it happening to you.

👇

— Matt Henderson (@dafacto) August 5, 2022

In essence, Olai’s fraud includes deceiving a victim into thinking they have been paid for an OTC crypto transaction when they haven’t.

How it functioned

Henderson claimed Olai contacted him over the Telegram chat service to inquire about buying AURORA tokens using USC Coin, which is how the cryptocurrency scam got started (USDC).

The parties decided to carry out the transaction using escrow, which is a typical practice in which a dependable, impartial third party holds assets on both sides of the transaction and releases them to the counterparty when payment requirements are satisfied.

Henderson chose Frank Braun, the head of security at Aurora Labs, to serve as the escrow agent in this instance; Henderson first referred to Braun as “Steve” in the Twitter thread.
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The second party I suggested, “Steve”, did accept his friend request.

After a brief get-to-know-each-other chat, Olai said Steve would do, and created a Discord group DM between the three of us—plus “Gerard”, Olai’s “business partner”.

— Matt Henderson (@dafacto) August 5, 2022

Henderson became suspicious when his escrow partner posted a screenshot of him allegedly giving the buyer permission to release the full amount of AURORA tokens.

Aurora labs executive Henderson claims that the con artists imitated his Discord profile and told Braun to give them the AURORA token balance.

Henderson was unaware his profile had been cloned and scammers were impersonating him because of Discord’s blocking feature.

After escaping the deception, Henderson went on to explain its intricate details, advising anyone using OTC trading to exercise extra caution and avoid falling for the clever con.

He also mentioned that the con artist going by the name of “Olai” might still be active in the neighborhood because, according to Twitter user Scott Yeager, someone using a similar identity and con game has been seen on Telegram.

The United States Federal Trade Commission discovered earlier this year that in 2021, social media sites were the genesis of about half of all cryptocurrency-related scams.

According to a report released by the FTC in June, scammers have stolen up to $1 billion in cryptocurrency this year, a five-fold rise from 2020.

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