TurtleDex Pulls a $2.5 Million Exit Scam on Binance Smart Chain

Approximately $2.5 million in Binance Coin (BNB) was drained from trading pools in the Binance Smart Chain DeFi exchanges after the anticipated launch of TurtleDex.

TurtleDex advertised itself as a DeFi storage platform and claimed it could help “keep data and preserve files without needing to keep them on their computer”. With the pre-sale launch on 15 March, the team hit their target in two hours, raising approximately 9000 BNB.

After the fundraising round, the funds were drained from the TurtleDex liquidity pool, moved to PancakeSwap and ApeSwap exchanges. From there, the funds were converted to Ethereum (ETH) and sent to nine separate wallets on the Binance Exchange.

Attention – The Turtledex (#TTDX) team has exit scammed.

We are just as shocked as everyone to see this unfold.

Please see the tweet below from @DefiStalker and help us track down the funds sent to @binance #TTDX is being removed from Jetfuel. https://t.co/ZUjRmPbrs2 https://t.co/3WvsYSWATg

— Jetfuel Finance Multi Chain Ecosystem 🚀 (@Jetfuelfinance) March 19, 2021

TurtleDex (TTDX) Holders Seeking Intervention

This type of scam is called exit scam, also known as “rug pull”. Shortly after it occurred, the owners deleted TurtleDex’s Telegram, official website, Twitter profile, and other social pages.

Distressed investors looked toward Binance for assistance and have reached out to CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ). They will need to keep their fingers crossed that Binance will step in and freeze the funds that were sent to Binance wallets.

Although with no formal response as of yet, investors will need to hope that CZ makes good on his word to assist with recovering funds lost in rug pulls based on a comment made a few days prior to the incident.

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1371866384578215940

High Risk In The DeFi Space

The community is up in arms about the event and is questioning the effectiveness of contract-audits since this is not the first exit scam to hit Binance Smart Chain.

So now the question is; who should the accountability be left with. The anon team is obviously to blame but what about @Jetfuelfinance & @ape_swap who've been in contact with @turtle_dex to setup & offer liquidty staking options for $TTDX. What due diligence was done?#BSC $BNB https://t.co/ddeNT4Hd20

— DEFSTALKR (@DEFSTALKR) March 19, 2021

This is the third upset on BSC DeFi exchanges this month.

• 5 March: farming protocol Meerkat Finance stole over $30 million worth of crypto-assets – 13.96 million in BUSD and over 73,000 BNB.
• 9 March: hackers took US$3.8 million worth of crypto from DeFi platform Dodo.

Binance has cautioned investors to DYOR (Do-Your-Own-Research) and be wary when investing in the new and growing DeFi space.