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NFT scam revealed: Celebrities and influential NFT holders are being targeted

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Celebrities and influential NFT holders are being targeted by NFT fraud scams.

NFT Scam Revealed: Celebrities and Influential NFT Holders Are Being targeted

Originally written by LAN Kane, DappRadar

The Tao of the meta-universe

Scam or guerrilla marketing?

Celebrities and influential NFT holders are being targeted by NFT faking scams, according to a series of posts by an NFT market observer. The sophisticated hoax involved the wallets of Pranksy, Shaquille O Neal, Snoop Dogg, Pudgy Penguins founder Cole Thereum, NFT Influencer Zeneca_33 and others.

The NFT market is currently dominated by savvy buyers and whales. Their actions set the minimum and maximum prices for most NFT collectibles. Professional NFT traders use analytics to track wallets in order to follow smart money and influencers. These tools tell them who bought what, when and where. History records of casting, buying and selling are available. However, data alone cannot directly distinguish between buying and foundry. This is a key point.

NFT market watcher Okhotshot. eth said the scam automatically cast NFT into certain wallets. To get the attention of professional traders, big buyers need to buy. So the scammer wrote code that would react when the buyer minted the coin. The same deal also shorted NFT to high-profile buyers like Snoop Dogg. Because airdrops are hidden in transactions, they are treated as coins rather than free airdrops. Professional traders thought Snoop was copying, and so they did.

Take a look in Snoop Dogg's wallet and you'll see that he actually has 101 Bored Ape Mirror Club NFTs, worth a total of about $8,000.

Using a single interface for a specific NFT, we can see that Okhotshot. eth is right that casting and selling are indistinguishable. It looks like Snoop bought NFT for 0.03 ETH, in fact, he cast it for that price. In 101 other samples, we found the same pattern.

2 How does it work

简而言之，如果投资者看到他们正在关注的一个钱包出现了 NFT，他们可能会想要尽早进入，以确保转售时获得最高的利润率。那条推特继续解释说，骗子为他的 NFT 项目 Bored Ape Mirror Club 创建了智能合约，并建立了一个网站，并做出了 NFT 衍生品。还创造了 Swimmy Sharks NFT 系列，但我们将继续关注 Bored Apes 的衍生产品。

When visitors go to the site to cast the NFT, they receive the NFT without any problems, and then the NFT appears in their wallet. For most people, everything here is normal. The buyers had no idea what was going on because the scammers were not targeting the buyers but were actually luring the professional traders.

To get the attention of professional traders, you need a "buy" from a well-known buyer. So the scammer wrote the code, and it responded when the buyer cast it. The same deal also shorted NFT to well-known buyers like Snoopy Dogg. Since airdrops are hidden in the deal, they appear to be cast rather than free airdrops.

That will be the point of discussion - is this clever guerrilla marketing, or is it a full-blown scam? It can be argued from either direction. Still, the NFT whales are being devoured. Airdrops were disguised as casting to fool professional traders into knowing that high-profile buyers were snapping up NFT. They also went to buy, and were actually cheated.

The scammer used an unverified contract on the blockchain. Thanks to okhotshot.eth decoding and searching the code, we've seen some of the most influential people in the NFT world. For example, you can see the wallet of CozomoMedici, or Snoppy Dogg, in the list.

In addition, line 353 shows all the influential wallets that were actually cast. You can find an unverified contract on Etherscan.

And, As Okhotshot.eth points out, in this case, he spotted the scam and blew the whistle on it. But the fraudsters here for their other Swimmy Sharks use the same code: 0 xaa4073916d9b03efec574d01ba94925653285cce.

Using DappRadar Portfolio, we can look up the balance of nearly 57,000 USD ETH in the wallet address. Even more interesting, there was no NFT in the wallet, only about $4000 ETH in the wallet on October 5th. Looks like they've been busy for a while.

DappRadar Portfolio

remind

As mentioned earlier, this scam targets the wallets of top Internet celebrities and celebrities. This is not to say that low-value investors won't be affected if analytics are used to track wallet movements. In conclusion, it is recommended not to cast any BoredApeMirrorClub or Swimmy SharksNFTs. We will continue to follow this story as more information becomes available. The above does not constitute investment advice. The information provided here is for reference only, please do your own research.