Cointelegraph claims that the suspected fraudsters created a website that seemed to be a service in order to use people’s Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs to animate the static network.
According to Cointelegraph, French police have charged five persons on suspicion of stealing $2.5 million worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through phishing schemes. The authorities did this by using research-based insights from the anonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.
The alleged fraudsters allegedly created a website that pretended to be a service in order to animate the static network from people’s Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFTs, according to Cointelegraph, which obtained this information from a report from the Agence France Presse (AFP) in October and shared it with Barron’s. The victims had their NFTs and login information taken by the phishing website. The five suspects, who have been charged with fraud perpetrated as part of a criminal gang, concealing fraud, and criminal association, are thought to have carried out the scam between late 2021 and early 2022.
Christophe Durand, deputy leader of France’s national cyber unit, told the AFP that it learned about the issue after seeing an investigation conducted by self-described on-chain investigator ZachXBT on Twitter, based on information provided by Cointelegraph. Durand explained that ZachXBT launched an inquiry in response to demands from the community of BAYC series owners who had their tokens stolen.
Additionally, Cointelegraph pointed out that a portion of the study focused on how accused con artists used Tornado cash to exchange and withdraw money. ZachXBT emphasised that since they took amounts in increments of 10 ETH to add value for the NFTs that were sold for throughout their crime, the mathys.eth address didn’t reveal anything in particular. ZachXBT, who has amassed a following of 303,200 on Twitter, has released a number of on-chain investigations focused on, among other things, rug pulls, frauds, hacks, pumps, and dumps.
