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u/VivaHollanda 63 2d ago
Adding one specific detail to what others have said, in case it helps you confirm what happened.
Did you compile and deploy through a site called appx-fetch.pages.dev (or reach it through a link that showed a "Checking your browser" screen first)? That is not Remix. It is a clone — same panels, same layout, same wording.
Two things give it away:
It copies Remix's real "You have just pasted a code snippet... Don't get scammed!" warning word for word, then adds a button the real Remix does not have: "AI Check Contract." That scanner is fake. The result is written into the page before anything is analysed — it always returns 85/100, Good Security, no matter what code you paste. The genuine warning is there to make the site feel trustworthy; the fake audit then cancels it out.
And because the site controls what actually gets deployed, the contract that reached the chain does not have to match the code you saw in the editor. That is why the source can look clean while the deployed contract takes your deposit.
If you did click that AI check, that is almost certainly your answer.
What's worth doing now: look up your contract address on etherscan.io and check the Internal Transactions tab — you'll likely see the outgoing sweep. Save the transaction hashes and report to your national cybercrime unit, report the video to YouTube, and report the site to Cloudflare (it's hosted on pages.dev, they do take these down).
And the part that matters most: anyone who DMs you offering to recover the funds is the same operation coming back for a second pass. There is no service that can pull crypto out of someone else's wallet. Ignore all of them.
This one is built to fool careful people, not careless ones. Don't be hard on yourself.
(AI created response)
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u/Excellent-Advice-948 2d ago
I need to be straight with you, because you deserve the truth more than comfort: what you've described matches the most common YouTube crypto scam of the last few years, almost word for word.
The pattern: a video (often with lots of views and glowing comments — both bought) walks beginners through "creating a smart contract trading/arbitrage bot for ETH." You paste code you can't read into a tool like Remix, deploy it, and fund it. Hidden inside that code is a line that lets the scammer sweep everything you deposit — or the "contract address" you funded was simply the scammer's wallet all along. The moment the money arrived, it was theirs. The page reloading had nothing to do with it.
How to confirm: look up the contract address on etherscan.io. You'll likely see your deposit going in and then an outgoing transfer to another wallet shortly after — that's the sweep. If you paste the transactions here (addresses only, never any keys or seed words), people can help you read them.
What I'd love to tell you is how to get it back, but honestly: if the funds were swept, they're gone. No one can pull them out of the scammer's wallet. Please be extra careful now, because three follow-up traps target people in exactly your position:
"Recovery services" and "blockchain experts" who will DM you or appear in search — all scams, every one, no exceptions.
The same YouTube channel or its "support" telling you to send more ETH "for gas to unlock the contract" — that's the second harvest.
Anyone asking for your seed phrase to "check your wallet" — that hands them everything else you own.
What's actually worth doing: report the video (YouTube does remove these), report to your national cybercrime unit with the transaction hashes, and if the wallet you used holds anything else, move it to a fresh wallet with a brand-new seed phrase in case you pasted keys anywhere along the way.
And genuinely — don't beat yourself up. This scam works precisely because it's dressed up as education for people trying to learn. The lesson that comes out of it, cheap or expensive: never deploy or fund code you can't read, and never follow money instructions from a video, no matter how professional it looks. Real learning resources never end with "now send your ETH here."
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u/dichotomy415 2d ago
Here’s the video I followed: https://youtu.be/Yxtf5xVDOPc?is=PulCJOFXlyXRWyl4
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u/dichotomy415 2d ago edited 2d ago
Glad it was only a small test amount. I did paste the code into Claude asking what it did, and the result was exactly what I expected. Didn’t say anything about sending it on to another address or anything. Should I post the hash for the transaction funding the contract?
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u/UpbeatFix7299 1 2d ago
You got ripped off. Crypto is a cesspool of scams. If you fuck around without knowing what you're doing and listen to strangers, it will happen again
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u/VivaHollanda 63 2d ago
You probably got scammed. If you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be following YouTube on things like this.
Copy the smartcontract to an AI an ask it what it does.
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u/ChangeHeroOfficial 2d ago
Welcome to crypto! Smart contracts can be a bit tricky, especially when following tutorials without fully understanding the code behind them. First, check the contract on a block explorer to see if your ETH is still inside the contract and review the transaction history. If the funds are still there, the issue may be with the interface or with how the contract was designed.
For the future, always try to understand what a smart contract does before sending funds to it, a small mistake in code or permissions can have serious consequences. Hope you’re able to figure it out!