Reports have recently circulated which confirmed that a Bitcoin Gold (BTG) wallet featured on the official BTG website was a scam. Since the scam's confirmation, the BTG development team removed the link to the fraudulent website from their own. However, before the removal, several users had been misled into trusting the site. To date, the scammer has raked in over $3.3 million.

The fraudulent website required users to share their private keys in order to claim their share of free BTG. Since its discovery, the website has been removed. However, according to an archived version, the website states that a user can claim their BTG providing that they enter either their private key.

The website was particularly misleading, and even the most tech-savvy user would have easily been duped. The factor that encouraged users to trust the scam the most was arguably BTG’s endorsement of the fraudulent website. Not only did the site’s link appear on the official BTG website, but the team promoted mybtgwallet several times on Twitter, and assured users of its safety. Since the BTG endorsed the scam, several users are calling it a conspiracy. The latest events have also called into question the BTG team’s competency and ability.

Perhaps the more pressing issue is what obligations developers have towards their user base following a scam. The question has become more relevant as more scams have surfaced. Earlier this week, $7 million worth of Verge coins were stolen from a wallet service called Coinpouch. Coinpouch was an iOS wallet app which also misled users by virtue of it being listed on the official Verge website.

Recent events have begged the question whether cryptocurrency development teams should inspect third-party wallet codes before endorsing them. While certain coding nuances might escape the average user, a developer could easily spot wallet scams by conducting a quick code inspection.

Since the mybtgwallet scam has been reported, the BTG team came under fire for not only endorsing the scam but also for their slow response time.

A BTG team member stated last week that a preliminary investigation proved that only certain theft claims caused by mybtgwallet were reliable. However, it has since been proven that every single theft claim was legitimate. The individual behind mybtgwallet scam has stolen $30,000 worth of ethereum, $72,000 worth of litecoin, $107,000 worth of bitcoin gold, and $3 million worth of Bitcoin.

The only details known of the responsible party is the user's pseudonym. While the fraudulent website claimed to be open source, the code was updated on Github. The updated code allowed the scammer to directly receive all users’ private keys.

Following the events, the BTG team released a statement in which they confirmed that they are in the process of conducting their own investigation with a team of security experts. The team added that they will continue to update their users as new information comes to light.

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