How much they earned from the LIBRA token scam, or calculate the average salary of a crypto scammer

Everyday, the crypto community faces scams in which unknown individuals enrich themselves at the expense of gullible users. One such situation happened with the LIBRA meme coin. This case was special because, for the first time in history, a current and legitimate president of the country — Javier Milei from Argentina—was involved in promoting the scam token. In our new research, we uncovered all the blockchain activity of LIBRA’s creators and calculated how much scammers earned from this coin.

Summary

The hype around the LIBRA token started on February 14. On that day, the meme coin was created, and a few hours later Argentine President Javier Milei wrote about it in his X (ex-Twitter) account. He claimed that LIBRA was designed to revitalize the country’s economy. A few hours after the publication, the market capitalization of the meme coin increased to $5 billion. A couple of hours later, it fell by more than 90%. This happened because the creators of LIBRA began to mass sell a huge number of coins, using the classic Pump & Dump scheme.

Immediately after the incident, Milei deleted the publication in X and stated that he had nothing to do with meme coin. Despite the investigations and calls for impeachment, as of the end of March 2025, Milei is still the president of Argentina. Apparently, he managed to keep the LIBRA incident quiet.

Lawsuit has been filed in the New York Supreme Court against the LIBRA token’s creators

Retail investor losses totaled $251 million

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Let’s go after the money

GetBlock Research has managed to discover 8 addresses associated with the LIBRA token’s creators who made over $100 million.

DefcyKc4yAjRsCLZjdxWuSUzVohXtLna9g22y3pBCm2z was the first address used by the scammers to create LIBRA. Before the meme coin was minted, it received 100 SOL as collateral (90 SOL from the Kraken exchange and another 10 SOL from the FixedFloat exchange).

The LIBRA token was created at 21:38:02 (UTC, hereafter) on February 14. It was assigned a smart contract address — Bo9jh3wsmcC2AjakLWzNmKJ3SgtZmXEcSaW7L2FAvUsU. Thereafter, 1 billion LIBRA was issued.

200 million LIBRA were transferred to the address — Gj9esbWVNJyyy55SDJzYudMAznewqmW3Xb6GpUakcCNwT.

500 million LIBRA was transferred to the address — FdWhTThthSN7mbcmBgh18dzogi1dXqQqBb6BnnzZEJJn, after which the same coins were transferred to another address — 42rex5yRsP1mdAKHzB5avDzagT6mqB5uYPergUFZ2Tgn.

At 21:52:20 on February 14, the token’s metadata was created. And at 22:01, the Argentine president published a call to buy LIBRA on X. Subsequently, the publication was deleted, but its text was saved thanks to a screenshot.

After the massive sale of LIBRA, the address that was used to mint meme coin received about $13 million in profit in USDC stablecoins. At 22:30 on February 14, this address sent 650 000 LIBRA to another wallet — 3apupKwTisjy4Wx1zVndXVegmxtR9majPEgHatBRZ1LF.

The scammers then used 7 other addresses to withdraw liquidity from LIBRA.

It can be seen that the address 61yKS9bjxWdqNgAHt439DfoNfwK3uKPAJGWAsFkC5M4C is the key address, as it accumulated most of the funds ($44,6 million).

In total, the scammers managed to withdraw $106 million.

One of the factors in the “success” of the LIBRA scam is the speed with which the token sale was organized. Mass sales of the meme coin began less than half an hour after its creation. During this time, LIBRA did not manage to pass the tokenomics audit. Moreover, the token’s creators did not even release any documentation or a brief description of the project.

Team involved in the release of the Libra meme coin planned to launch the token in Nigeria

The country’s head was not directly involved in the process, but negotiations were held with members of his team

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Interesting fact

On-chain data indicates that the LIBRA creators may be related to the creators of US First Lady Melania Trump’s (MELANIA) token. One of the addresses to which funds were transferred after the withdrawal of LIBRA liquidity — FTjLYkNARZHnqekpKj5mHzbJx7EqW1fSr15Ec4oijBUQ received 0,14 SOL from the address CuJgNwudFRFRikz1e82Rug6CNtxfoery8qBRUGPtSx5KVi, which received funds from the Bybit wallet used to create the MELANIA token.