French phishing scammers behind NFT theft now exposed!

by James · August 10, 2022

Crypto sleuth ZachXBT, a self-described carpetbag survivor turned 2D detective. He posted on Twitter exposing French phishing scammers who have stolen millions worth of NFTs.

The analyst and investigator on the chain have tracked down two fraudsters involved in defrauding investors of their Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs from the trail of transactions. The two French phishing scammers are believed to be involved in several scams since December 2021, which led to illegal profits of over $2.5 million.

Back in December 2021, the two scammers targeted their first victim, Twitter user Dilly Dally for Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) #237.

The user fell victim to a scam after clicking on a link shared by a verified member of the BAYC Discord and authorizing a transaction on a website. When he did this, Dilly Dally was led to believe that he would produce an animated version of his BAYC.

This is how he lost the BAYC from his wallet, which after the approved transaction ended up in the hands of the fraudsters. The fraudsters sold BAYC #237 for $178,000 (47 ETH).

ZachXBT also exposed a scam that took place on January 5, 2022. Another victim Twitter user El Mono phished at the time for BAYC #2083 after messaging a scammer (exyt) on Instagram.

In January 2022, the phishing scammers similarly targeted another Twitter user Tumulo who was also phished for BAYC #6166 after messaging the same scammer on Twitter.

The scam activities did not stop and around March 21, 2022, another Twitter user Black Apple Art was phished for BAYC #71, #5964 and #8599 after being tagged in a Tweet by a stolen verified Twitter account.

Eleven days later, the aforementioned Twitter user Jason Stone also lost his BAYC #181 in the same manner. That’s not all, the same scammers also phished 2 MAYC and 1 Doodles from three additional victims.

All of these scams amounted to a total loss of over $2.5 million, but it is unclear where the fund went or who was potentially behind it. However, the investigator identified the two fraudsters as Mathys and Camille from France, but real persons behind the names still remain shrouded.

Although ZachXBT closed the investigation with photographic evidence, one of the scammers managed to deactivate their Twitter handles while the other went private. Fortunately, all the tweets were saved offline before the article was published.

It seems that these two thieves were good at gaining the trust of their victims, but not enough to cover their tracks.