I just read an interesting security report confirming what many suspected: the old MEV bot scams are back with new faces. A blockchain security company documented how scammers constantly rebrand these schemes to ride the waves of current hype. This time, they are exploiting the buzz around artificial intelligence.

Basically, what used to happen with Uniswap arbitrage bots is now being rebranded as ChatGPT Arbitrage MEV Bot. It’s clever from a criminal perspective: adding ChatGPT to the name makes everything seem more credible to inexperienced users, who think they are using a tool built with OpenAI’s AI.

How does the scam work? They promise you a MEV bot that will monitor new tokens and price fluctuations on Ethereum to generate massive profits. They guide you to create a MetaMask wallet and click on a fraudulent link on Remix. Before you notice something is wrong, the code is already deployed. Then they ask you to fund the smart contract to “activate” it. The more ETH you deposit, the higher your supposed earnings, they say. But when you press start, everything disappears. The ETH goes directly into the scammer’s wallet through a backdoor in the code.

The numbers are concerning. They have identified at least three scammer addresses using this technique. One has stolen 30 ETH (over $78,000) from more than 100 victims since August. The other two have stolen 20 ETH each, about $52,000, from 93 victims. The genius of the strategy is the “wide net approach”: they steal small amounts from many people, who often don’t even bother to recover the money because the effort costs more than the damage.

YouTube is full of videos promoting this type of MEV bot scam. The warning signs? Unsynced audio and video, recycled videos from other sources, or suspicious comments full of praise at first that later turn into “it’s a scam” in subsequent updates. If you see these patterns, stay away. The most important thing to remember is: no legitimate bot will ever ask you to deposit funds into a smart contract via a random link on Remix. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably one of these well-known scams.