AB Finance Airdrop Scam

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AB Finance

At some point on August 25th of 2021, millions of Binance smart chain addresses received a mysterious ABFin token, which appeared to be valuable and directed them to abfin.org. On that website, AB Finance claimed to be a regulated company and that all users had to do to sell their tokens was to unlock them. The unlocking process only required users to give full control over their wallet to the website, at which point any other tokens in their wallet could be withdrawn. The website appears to have subsequently upgraded to look more similar to PancakeSwap, which likely enticed more users to attempt the swap. It's unclear how many users were affected, and whether any further investigation was performed to attempt to recover funds.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About AB Finance

"ABFIN Token Finance is a regulated [c]ompany. All you need to do in order to exchange your ABFIN Token is going through easy step by clicking on the Claim ABFIN Token Button, after this is done, you will be able to Exchange them to BNB in PancakeSwap."

"Today I'm bringing you a token called AB Finance, which you probably received eight million, and you're trying to sell it on PancakeSwap and it doesn't work. So, this is a scam. Let's take a look at the token first. As you can see, one million people - one million four hundred thousand people received this token. Everyone seems to be having this almost nine million tokens."

"As you can see, uh, there is, uh, the burn address has 100 percent of the tokens. One of the - this is the scammers address has 99 percent, and everyone seems to have, you know, that - this is more than 100 percent, so. And if you add together that a million people received these tokens you can see that it's way more than 100 percent in total. So, when you're trying to unlock this then, it tells you to, tells you to go to this website called abfin.org, but this is redirected to abfin.me. Which this is the website."

"The scam only works if you click on this button, right. There is a pop-up and you unlock the wallet. When you do this, you authorize the scammer to take other tokens from your wallet and and take it from you. So whatever you do, don't click this and you know, either MetaMask will pop up and and ask for authorization. Once you do that, you are in trouble." "This is the only way they can take money from you."

"From that one million four hundred thousand addresses that received this airdrop, nobody was able to trade the token on poocoin, so it's not possible to get rid of, you know, get rid of the tokens from your wallet. It's not possible to buy or sell this token. So what you can do is just leave it alone in your wallet. Don't go to this website and try to unlock your wallet."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - AB Finance Airdrop Scam

Date	Event	Description
August 25th, 2021 12:00:00 AM	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost is unknown.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Prevention Policies

When self-custodying, users have a responsibility to always take great care with any approvals they make. Approving full permissions to a website is usually not advisable. Another method of reducing risk would be to move the majority of funds to a fully offline wallet which is not interacted with.