In the last years, cryptocurrencies are increasingly popular. Even people who are not experts have started to invest in these securities and nowadays cryptocurrency exchanges process transactions for over 100 billion US dollars per month. However, many cryptocurrencies have low liquidity and therefore they are highly prone to market manipulation schemes. In this paper, we perform an in-depth analysis of pump and dump schemes organized by communities over the Internet. We observe how these communities are organized and how they carry out the fraud. Then, we report on two case studies related to pump and dump groups. Lastly, we introduce an approach to detect the fraud in real time that outperforms the current state of the art, so to help investors stay out of the market when a pump and dump scheme is in action.

After discovering dozens of tokens claiming to be connected to ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, blockchain security company PeckShield has issued a warning. In a post from February 20, the company disclosed that at least three "BingChatGPT" tokens seem to be a part of honeypot schemes, which use smart contracts to trick users into transferring Ether, which the attacker then traps and steals. According to PeckShield, in what is frequently referred to as a "pump and dump" scam or "rug pull," at least two of the identified tokens have already lost almost 100% of their worth, while a third is at a 65% decline. A pump-and-dump scheme typically entails the creators orchestrating a campaign of false advertising and hype to entice investors into buying tokens, then covertly offloading their investment in the scheme when values rise. A pump and dump plan was used to create "dozens of tokens," according to PeckShield, by at least one of the criminals behind the tokens, "Deployer 0xb583."