Crypto-currency start-up Experty has promised to refund investors taken in by a phishing scam which left them $150,000 worse off ahead of a recent initial coin offering (ICO).
The firm’s mission statement claims it wants to encourage the global adoption of digital currency within three years “by creating an intuitive, easy to use application that is suitable for wide scale usage.”
That application will apparently help to solve the current blockchain skills crisis by allowing “experts to monetize their skills through a skype-like voice and video application.”
However, Experty’s ICO last week went wrong after scammers jumped in ahead of the event by sending phishing emails to investors.
These emails, which were reportedly littered with spelling mistakes, promised a special bonus of Experty tokens (EXY) for those who sent Ethereum to a third-party wallet address not connected to the company.
It appears as if the phishers managed to get hold of the email addresses by compromising the machine of an Experty user who was conducting a Proof of Care (PoC) review.
That’s why the firm said it is giving 100 EXY tokens to everyone whose ETH address was sat in the firm’s database. It followed-up on Sunday to say that it would be contacting those affected by the phishing attack individually.
That notice had the following:
“We will be contacting the victims that are in our database in order to distribute the proportional amount of EXY tokens to them, including the bonuses for their tier, from our company allocation. If someone wishes to receive ETH instead, we ask them to please contact us privately about this.
“Any ETH sent to the scammer after this announcement [January 28, 2018 at 21:30 UTC] will not be refunded in order to prevent people purposely sending money to the scam address to receive EXY tokens.”
Crypto-ICOs are an increasingly lucrative way for cyber-criminals to make money.
According to a recent report from Ernst & Young, 10% of all ICO funds have been stolen, with phishing the primary tactic.