The emails arrived on Monday promising refunds. They came from valid ".gov" email addresses, with headers from a cryptocurrency exchange.
But the emails weren't legitimate and they weren't April Fools' Day pranks. They were phishing scams, according to the Maryland Comptroller's Office, designed to make it look like users could follow instructions to get money from Bittrex, a now-defunct digital currency.
"The email was sent from compromised accounts to multiple listservs hosted on a third-party server," the comptroller's office said in a statement Friday. No other systems were affected and no taxpayer personal information was compromised, according to the statement.
Although the number of people who received the apparent phishing email is unknown, fewer than 30 people had told the Comptroller's Office that they had clicked on any of the links in the email as of Thursday afternoon, and none said having experienced more attacks or data. heist.
Bittrex closed in August 2023 after settling charges that it operated as an unregistered stock exchange, broker, and domestic clearing agency. The platform filed for bankruptcy before the deal.
TO website for users who have funds to claim from the platform warns about phishing scams and a fake website with inflated account balances to lure people into entering their personal information.
The comptroller's office notified those who received the phishing emails and ordered them to delete them. Officials there also disabled affected email accounts so they could not be used to send more malicious emails.
The comptroller's office said anyone who provided financial information after following a link in Monday's email should contact their banking service.
