  The production of counterfeit money has a long history. It refers to the
creation of imitation currency that is produced without the legal sanction of
government. With the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, there is expanding
evidence that counterfeit cryptocurrency has also appeared. In this paper, we
empirically explore the presence of counterfeit cryptocurrencies on Ethereum
and measure their impact. By analyzing over 190K ERC-20 tokens (or
cryptocurrencies) on Ethereum, we have identified 2, 117 counterfeit tokens
that target 94 of the 100 most popular cryptocurrencies. We perform an
end-to-end characterization of the counterfeit token ecosystem, including their
popularity, creators and holders, fraudulent behaviors and advertising
channels. Through this, we have identified two types of scams related to
counterfeit tokens and devised techniques to identify such scams. We observe
that over 7,104 victims were deceived in these scams, and the overall financial
loss sums to a minimum of $ 17 million (74,271.7 ETH). Our findings demonstrate
the urgency to identify counterfeit cryptocurrencies and mitigate this threat.
