Summary:

Mars Labs LLC - metaverse game platform builder with $MRST token - had been involved in an scam activity, where the scammers impersonated the official listing mangers using verifiable but hacked Telegram accounts, which caused $1M USDT worth of MRST to be taken away and subsequently was dumped via OKX DEX on 7th December 2022.

We can not be certain how the scammers got a hold of the Kucoin official accounts but here are some examples of Telegram account takeover hacking: https://www.secureverifyconnect.info/telegram-takeover https://medium.com/immunefi/how-not-to-get-hacked-on-telegram-2db2b93a5fa2

How it happened

Listing manager contacted us via Telegram DM claiming that she was Yu****, listing manager of Kucoin, who we had other Kucoin managers verified the account for us, as well as via Kucoin’s official verification system: https://www.kucoin.com/cert?lang=en_US

Actual account name and personal name has been blurred to prevent any possibility of further scam.

Actual account name and personal name has been blurred to prevent any possibility of further scam.

The same account can still be verified on Kucoin’s official website (https://www.kucoin.com/cert?lang=en_US). Actual account name has been blurred to prevent any possibility of further scam.

The same account can still be verified on Kucoin’s official website (https://www.kucoin.com/cert?lang=en_US). Actual account name has been blurred to prevent any possibility of further scam.

Shown below is a part of the conversation downloaded from Telegram. Some details containing sensitive information have been blurred. The scammer’s accounts have since been deleted.

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Then for further verification we asked:

  1. to create a group chat together with other Kucoin employees who we can also verify via the official website
  2. send us an email using the official email domain

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