Shiba Inu Scammers Fake Founder Wallet to Push 137 Tokens

How Scammers Exploited SHIB's Founder Wallet

Scammers have found a sneaky way to impersonate Ryoshi, the pseudonymous creator of Shiba InuSHIB+1.06%. A longtime SHIB community researcher named Mazrael recently exposed how bad actors used fake transfer logs to promote at least 137 scam tokens.

The goal behind this trick is simple: make bad tokens look legitimate. If a new token appears to come directly from the creator of SHIB, unsuspecting investors are far more likely to trust it.

The Smart Contract Trick Explained

How can someone fake a transfer from a wallet they do not own? In crypto, tokens are just smart contract programs running on the blockchain, and each program keeps its own internal ledger of transfers.

A scammer can code a token contract to write any address into its transfer event log as the sender. By writing the official SHIB deployer address into these logs, block explorers like Etherscan display the event as if Ryoshi sent the tokens.

The SHIB deployer never signed anything, Mazrael stated, urging investors to always inspect who actually signed the transaction.

Breakdown of the Scam by the Numbers

Mazrael gathered on-chain data to show the full scope of this ongoing deception:

• At least 137 scam tokens claimed to receive coins from the SHIB deployer.
• Over 9,131 fake transfers were recorded on block explorers.
• More than 2,500 individual wallets were targeted by these malicious interactions.
• Zero transactions were actually signed or authorized by the real SHIB deployer.

Fake Tokens and Misleading Promotions

The list of fake tokens includes project names designed to ride the hype of existing crypto trends. Some of these fraudulent tokens include APE, three separate SHIBA INU2.0 tokens, Shib Chain, SHIB DAO, METARUFFY, and a token named simply Ryoshi.

Other fakes include Caw, BabyBABY+0.00% Caw, BONE2.0, three UNLEASHED DAO tokens, and three fake Shibarium tokens, which were created a full year before the real Shibarium network ever launched.

To make matters worse, several former community admins and crypto veterans mistakenly promoted some of these tokens as Ryoshi-backed, which gave these scams unearned credibility.

Understanding the Real SHIB Deployer Wallet

To protect yourself, it helps to know the history of the real SHIB deployer wallet (`0xB8f2...FA08`). This key created only one single contract: the original SHIB token.

The real deployer address has been entirely inactive since October 2021. It has never published a signed public message on-chain or on Etherscan, and there is no public record linking the address to any verified individual.

Additionally, other official tokens in the Shiba Inu ecosystem came from different addresses. BONE was deployed by `shiba-swap.eth`, while LEASH came from `0xA221...1494` (the key that deployed Star Link, with developer Woof Decentra maintaining LEASH's rebase oracle key for five years). TREAT also used a distinct deployer key.

How to Spot Fake Token Transactions

Staying safe in crypto requires looking past surface-level event logs. When inspecting a transaction on Etherscan, always click on the specific transaction hash and examine the true From address.

The From address reveals the actual wallet that signed and paid gas for the transaction. If that address does not match the official wallet, the transfer log is fake regardless of what the token contract claims.