A fraudulent blockchain project, Harvest Keeper, that claimed to focus on Artificial Intelligence has swindled nearly $1 million from its users. The CertiK blockchain security firm has confirmed the protocol as a “scam,” and further added that almost $933,000 of user assets were stolen. At the time of writing, users were advised not to interact with the project’s URL.
The scam occurred when a privileged function called “getAmount” transferred $709,000 USDT to a contract on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Harvest Keeper’s team also stole user assets via “ice phishing” transactions on BSC, Ethereum, and Polygon blockchains. The total theft was $219,000 on all three blockchains through ice phishing transactions.
Harvest Keeper presented itself as an innovative AI project that optimizes the trading process to achieve maximum profit. It promised a daily return of 4.81% on user deposits and a 101% investment return in 21 days, as well as an 8% referral reward. The project was launched in January of this year amidst the hype around AI, created by the release of ChatGPT.
The Harvest Keeper protocol claims to operate in conjunction with an AI trading bot that “completely eliminates the human factor in trading.” The project aimed to “create the possibility of generating profits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, analyzing patterns, risks, incidents, and factors associated with past experiences with the help of algorithms.” The team also stated that their decision-making process would rely only on objective data, excluding assumptions and hypotheses.
Harvest Keeper has over 30,000 followers on Twitter and more than 32,000 on its Telegram channel. Despite the scam accusations, the project continues to tweet normally. For instance, on Monday morning, the team announced that it had finished preparations for the launch of its BNB and USDT smart contracts with increased daily rewards of 6.21%.
However, Harvest Keeper has blocked comments on its Twitter posts, preventing users from warning others about the scam on the platform. Moreover, there has been no mention or response to CertiK’s scam allegations, and the project’s website remains active.
The use of blockchain technology has created opportunities for many innovative and transparent projects. However, the presence of scams such as Harvest Keeper highlights the need for users to conduct thorough research before investing in any project.
Users are feeling distressed and outraged about the situation and have been reaching out to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao for assistance.
Additionally, some individuals have cautioned others not to click on any links that Harvest Keeper claims will aid in recovering their funds. As the theft is a recent occurrence, no information has been released about the perpetrator’s identity, though that could change in the near future. Nonetheless, users will need to put up a struggle to retrieve their lost funds, an all too familiar occurrence that has been recurring amidst the market’s numerous negative events.
