Date: September 28, 2022 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov WASHINGTON — IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) identified a potential phishing scam Monday that could affect upwards of 100,000 cryptocurrency users. The scam is built around a newly created contract and Ethereum Request for Comments 20 (ERC-20) token named UniswapLR.com. There is no known connection between this phishing scam and the existing Uniswap protocol. Shortly after the creation of this new token, tens of thousands of addresses on the blockchain received the token in batches of 1,000. These tokens are made to appear that they are arriving from Uniswap V3: Positions NFT. "This pattern mirrors a similar phishing attack that occurred in July 2022 and resulted in more than $9 million in stolen Ether. By issuing this alert, IRS: CI hopes to protect legitimate users from becoming the next phishing victim," said Jarod Koopman, IRS:CI Executive Director for Cyber and Forensic Services. This new contract was created and funded by a wallet address that is directly connected to the wallet address that received stolen funds in the July 2022 phishing attack. In July 2022, numerous addresses received a token named UniswapLP.com from a malicious contract posing as a non-fungible token (NFT). Individuals who received the tokens were directed to a website to connect their wallets, which then gave control to the scammers and permitted the scammers to liquidate the individuals' cryptocurrency wallets. If you were a target or victim of the latest phishing scam, you can make a report to an IRS:CI field office. Contact information for each IRS:CI field office can be found in the agency's annual report PDF. IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, boasting a nearly 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.
