Apollon Market , one of the largest Darknet marketplaces , has carried out a scam targeting its own users. It is an “ exit scam ,” in which sellers are locked out of their accounts, preventing them from shipping orders to their customers. However, customers continue to log in and send money to buy products that they will likely never receive.
Reddit users are reporting that sellers are unable to withdraw money or register for their accounts. Only buyers can still access their accounts.
The Apollon market (https://apollonujscjrlng.onion) was founded in March 2018. The suspicious behavior was observed a few days ago.
Apollon users began warning other users via third-party services. One user wrote:
“Administrators are stealing vendors and then locking them out of accounts , claiming they were victims of a phishing attack. We only used our URL and 2FA. So how is this possible? They banned us from the account… Stay away from this market.”
Another seller claimed to have lost of cryptocurrency to the exit scam. Users often warn each other on Dread, a Reddit-like forum on the deep web. However, the forum was down these days due to a DDoS attack.
Experts have found that whenever Dread goes offline, such a scam. It can't be a coincidence.
It is the third market to carry out an exit scam while Dread was offline.
The administrator of the Dread market claims that the Apollon market is responsible for “the attacks against the forum.”
Other Apollon Market sellers reported the problem via the Darknetlive.
“I can confirm that when I try to log in to Apollon I see the following message: The username and/or password you entered is invalid,” the seller SteroidWarehouse said. The seller said that in the morning he was able to log in to account and then, without any warning, he lost access. “Also, several customers told me that their wallets were emptied last night and this morning. This is an exit scam. If you need more details, please contact me,” he said.
The news about the Apollon market exit scam was also published on the Darknetstats.
“The second largest darknet market is in the middle of an exit scam, according to many user reports. Last week we received several reports that users' deposits were not added to their accounts and today all supplier accounts were locked, leading to the conclusion that this is an exit scam”, says Darknetstats.
