$70,000 in ZCoin Stolen: User Gets Scammed Trying to Set up Znode

A user lost $70,000 worth of ZCoin to a scammer who offered him help in setting up a Znode, which requires 1,000 XZC.

While absolute beginners often lose their cryptocurrencies to scams such as ‘bitcoin doubling’ and so on, in a recent incident, a scammer managed to steal 1,000 XZC (ZCoin worth about $70,000 right now), from a user by pretending to help set up a Znode.

The user, magvie#8479, was approached on ZCoin’s official discord, by user #1541 (soccerfan), who offered to help magvie set up a Znode on VPS.

According to magvie, the scammer struck up a long conversation and seemed very friendly, giving him the impression that he was a supportive member of the community:

“...my thoughts: what a nice guy, gotta love the zcoin community. so he started to go through everything with me even explained all of the steps in detail to me. we also start talking about some private things. about crypto and its critics, about my girl friend and his wife, about where he’s living (belgium)…just seemed like a really nice guy and we were joking a lot.”

Afterwards, helping magvie set up the node on the VPS, the scammer sent him multiple commands, one of which generated a wallet on the VPS, and he asked magvie to transfer the 1,000 XZC there. Once the scammer had access to the funds, he moved them.

It is important to know that your Znode should not hold your coins. It only uses the Znode genkey, and even if a scammer gets access to that, he can only start or stop your node, not move your funds. 

Additionally, when you need help, it is best to double check with admins and trusted community members instead of trusting random users.

Magvie’s story, posted officially by the ZCoin team, serves as a cautionary tale, albeit an expensive and unfortunate one, for those who seek help from community members in setting up their wallets or nodes.

Sadly, as cryptocurrencies grow in value, hackers and scammers are constantly trying to take advantage of unsuspecting users, and given how blockchain transactions are immutable and often anonymized, money lost is gone forever.