‘Free Pi’ scams to steal wallet keys resurfacing in Vietnam

"After entering my wallet key, all of the nearly 2,000 Pi I had mined was stolen," Hoang Hai, 60, who joined Pi Network in 2020, says.

Not knowing how to trade Pi, Hai still has his wallet key saved to "check on Pi as needed" on his son’s instruction, he reveals. Last week Hai saw a promotion for free Pi advertised on social media. After clicking on the link, he typed in his wallet key as instructed, and all the Pi he had in his wallet disappeared.

Truong Hoa, 56, almost fell for a scam purportedly involving high-value Pi trading. When a person claimed on social media they were willing to pay US$100 per token instead of the $2 at which Pi was listed on exchanges, she contacted that person to sell half of her holdings.

"Through messages, they sent me a link and instructed me how to transfer the Pi; they even offered to do a video call," she tells VnExpress. "I suspected it was a scam, so I didn’t follow through."

An advertisement promoting Free Pi on social media. Photo by VnExpress/ Duy Phong

According to Duy Anh, an administrator of a Pi Network-related Facebook group with around 160,000 members, scams to steal Pi wallets have been around since the project was still a "closed mainnet", where only Pi investors within the Pi Network could trade with one another.

"Once Pi became an open network on Feb. 20, and you could trade with people outside the network, scams are becoming rampant. Every day there are tens of posts of that sort shared to the group; I only approve the most noteworthy cases."

In the past scammers would make posts asking to buy Pi at a high price, even making a small deposit to gain trust and lure the seller to transfer all their Pi, he says. "Now they have become more sophisticated, even running ads for free Pi on social media like X, Facebook or Google Ads to increase their reach. They also buy fake interactions to create a convincing appearance, as if many people actually received free Pi."

He says the targets are usually older people or those who lack tech savvy or knowledge about crypto, and that the scammers are also tapping into people’s greed.

According to Vo Do Thang, director of network administration and security training center Athena, some common means of stealing online accounts, particularly crypto wallets, include sending a file or a link which contains malware and creating a fake website that mirrors the appearance of official sites causing targets to provide important personal information.

When users comply, they install the malware, essentially handing over their accounts to hackers, he says. "Once the device is breached, the malware will execute steps to gain control of accounts and withdraw funds without any possibility of recourse. The best way to protect yourself is to refuse to comply with directions from strangers, suspect all unknown links and avoid clicking on links if you don’t know where they came from."

Pi Network was created in 2019, with advertising saying investors can own Pi tokens for free with daily logins to the Pi Network app. Vietnam has large numbers of such "Pi miners." The project garnered controversy for taking almost six years to become an "open network" Feb. 20 this year, which means allowing users to transfer Pi to other platforms for trading.